Frontier Taiwan: An Anthology of Modern Chinese Poetry

An island is a paradox; it is simultaneously isolated and open, restricted and free, with the surrounding sea serving sometimes as a protective barrier, other times as a vital passage to other lands and cultures. Situated off the southeast coast of the Asian continent, with Japan and Korea to the north and the Philippines to the south, halfway between Shanghai and Hong Kong, Taiwan not only occupies an important strategic position in the western Pacific region but also is a nexus of diverse linguistic, economic, social, and cultural crosscurrents from Asia and other parts of the world. Over centuries of clashing and converging, these influences have shaped and continue to shape the society on the island. If its small size—only 13,885 square miles, half the size of Ireland but comparable to Switzerland or Holland—has historically been a cause of Taiwan’s marginalization, this is compensated for by an openness and an ability to adapt to the new. During the past four centuries, Taiwan has evolved dramatically from a little-known island to an entrepôt, an outpost of the Chinese empire, a Japanese colony, and, today, a nation-state with 23 million people and one of the largest economies in the world. Taiwan not only has come to embody an internationally acclaimed economic miracle but also is rightly proud to be a hard-won, mature democracy.

Equally deserving of worldwide recognition is that some of the best modern Chinese poetry also comes from Taiwan. The history of modern Taiwanese poetry tells the story of how the periphery has transformed itself into the frontier. In the Chinese context, “modern poetry” is more than a chronological designation. Although all modern Chinese poetry was written in the twentieth century, not all twentieth-century poetry written in Chinese is “modern.” This term usually describes two things: language and form. Classical Chinese has been the poetic medium for more than three millennia, but modern poetry is written in the vernacular of the twentieth century, which is related to but distinct from the classical language, most notably in vocabulary, idiom, and syntax. Modern poetry does not follow the formal and prosodic conventions prescribed by the classical genre; free verse is the dominant form, although modern poetry freely borrows poetic forms from other cultures, the sonnet being a salient example. The differences in poetic medium, form, and style between classical and modern poetry are so vast that Chinese readers sometimes simply refer to the former as Old Poetry and the latter as New Poetry. Old Poetry continues to be written to this day, but this anthology is devoted exclusively to New Poetry.

The first modern Chinese poems appeared in New Youth (Xin qingnian) in January 1917; they were written by Hu Shi (1891–1962), who also attached a list of “Eight Things” (bashi), in essence a manifesto of the burgeoning Literary Revolution:

1. Make sure there is substance.

2. Do not imitate ancients.

3. Observe grammar.

4. Do not groan when you aren’t sick.

5. Get rid of clichés and formulaic expressions.

6. Do not use allusions.

7. Do not observe parallelism.

8. Do not avoid colloquial words and expressions. (Hu 1991:145)

Although succinct, “Eight Things” signals an unprecedented, radical departure from the classical tradition. Going beyond language and form, Hu also rejects certain stylistic and aesthetic conventions, such as imitation of earlier masters, use of stock motifs and imagery, and parallelism. Instead, he envisions a new poetry of individuality, originality, and sincerity.

From the very beginning, modern poetry has been in the vanguard of literary experimentation and cultural trends. The earliest modern poems preceded the first piece of modern fiction, Lu Xun’s (1881–1936) “Diary of a Madman,” by one year, and the iconoclastic thrust of the Literary Revolution laid the foundation for the theory and practice of modern Chinese poetry, a harbinger of the wholesale cultural reform of the May Fourth Movement, which began in 1919.

When modern poetry arose to challenge classical poetry in the early twentieth century, it was not unlike David taking on Goliath. Beginning with Confucius and later consolidated through the institutionalization of Confucianism, poetry had always held a special position in China. First of the three sister arts (along with calligraphy and painting), it was traditionally regarded as the most elevated art and the most prestigious form of writing. To this day, Chinese people still take pride in their glorious heritage of classical poetry and refer to China as a “nation of poets” (shi de minzu). Moreover, throughout the history of imperial China, poetry had played an important role in multiple spheres: moral, educational, and political in addition to intellectual and cultural. In other words, although classical poetry was primarily written by and for members of the elite, it occupied a central position in Chinese culture and society.

However, by the beginning of the twentieth century, the role and stature of poetry changed dramatically due to, among other factors, the adoption of a Western-styled education system and the compartmentalization of modern learning, the abolition of the civil service examination system, and the rapid modernization of material culture. Combined, these changes put an end to the moral, educational, social, and political functions that poetry had served for so long and so well, changing once and for all the traditional perception of poetry. The Literary Revolution in 1917 represents the culmination of these historical forces. With modern vernacular Mandarin institutionalized as the national language, New Poetry was linked to and won support from the national project of rebuilding China through modernization. This explains how modern poetry could establish itself as a legitimate form of writing within a relatively short time.

But the task that lay ahead was daunting. Although poetry still retained some of its old prestige as an art form, it no longer played a functional role in other, more “practical” spheres of a society bent on modernization and progress. Insofar as it is unimaginable for us moderns that, before the twentieth century, to become a government official a person had to be a competent poet, modern poetry was marginalized in society, but one among many genres of literature and art (M. Yeh 1991:5–28; M. Yeh 1994:xxiii–lv). The need to validate itself would remain with modern poetry for decades to come.

As a new way of writing, modern poetry is both challenging and challenged. The greatest challenge it faces is the issue of reception in modern China. Not only does modern poetry lack the privileged position that its traditional counterpart occupies, but its newness renders it strange and suspicious to both general readers and intellectuals. Compared with modern fiction, modern poetry represents a more radical paradigm shift vis-à-vis the Chinese tradition. Therefore, the challenge is manifold. First, modern poetry must define itself, which it does through artistic experiments and theoretical investigations on an unprecedented scale. This continuing effort amounts to a fundamental rethinking of the ontology of poetry—its nature and raison d’être (M. Yeh 1991:5–28).

Second, given its drastically limited social status and its highly experimental nature, modern poetry is burdened with the constant need to justify its existence to society at large. All too often, an easy justification is that poetry should serve social or political objectives. Depriving poetry of its most fundamental attribute, freedom of expression, such instrumentalism suspects, criticizes, and inhibits any individual exploration in language and form. It also underscores most controversies and debates throughout the history of modern Chinese poetry.

Closely related to the “usefulness” of poetry is the issue of readership. In short, to validate modern poetry, there must exist an audience receptive to the new form of writing. To this day, New Poetry has had mixed results. In a general sense, it has clearly succeeded in establishing itself as the representative form of Chinese poetry in the twentieth century and it is likely to remain so in the future. Although Old Poetry continues to be written, it is New Poetry that almost exclusively appears in the media, is the prescribed form of poetry contests, and is canonized in numerous literary anthologies and compendia.

On the other hand, the effort to create a broader, appreciative readership has not been completely successful. Critics, even some poets, have attributed this to obscurantism and solipsism on the part of the poet but have ignored a more fundamental cause: education, the media, and common language use make both general readers and intellectuals far more familiar with, and therefore receptive to, traditional Chinese poetry. Whether in the standardized curricula of mandatory education or, more generally, in the daily use of spoken and written Chinese (which contains a significant percentage of classical Chinese, such as oft-quoted verses and adages), people have far more exposure to traditional poetry than to modern poetry. In fact, the latter was excluded from all levels of formal education in Taiwan until the late 1970s. Even though a few modern poems have since been included in textbooks at the elementary and secondary levels, the selection is invariably limited by traditional, didactic themes (e.g., illustrating Confucian or humanitarian values), not based on originality and artistic merit.

Given these social and cultural conditions, modern poetry finds itself in a strange dilemma. It is simultaneously judged by its critics as too difficult and too easy: too difficult because it is distinctly different from the familiar forms and conventions of classical poetry, yet too easy because presumably it does not require any training in classical literature or technical skills—anyone who speaks modern Chinese can write it. Paradoxically, while some critics tend to disparage modern poetry as “popular,” crude, and shallow, others find it elitist and obscure.

To summarize, since its inception in 1917 modern Chinese poetry has grappled with the following issues.

First, a self-proclaimed iconoclast, modern poetry must establish an identity distinct from classical poetry. This involves an overhaul of the concept of poetry. Modern poets seek to redefine its essence and art (“What is poetry?”), its readership (“To whom does poetry speak?”), and its purpose (“Why poetry?”) from many new angles. Whereas much literary experimentation is carried out in the name of modernity, reactions often advocate a return to tradition. But modernity and tradition are two sides of the same coin: insofar as no return to tradition can possibly reproduce the letter and spirit of classical Chinese poetry, modernity is often the result of selective, individualistic appropriations of tradition.

Second, modern poetry has to defend itself against the pervasive presence and still powerful influence of classical poetry in modern society and culture. Turning away from the old paradigm, modern poets often find inspiration in other literary traditions. Unfortunately, although perhaps inevitably, the tension between tradition and modernity is often interpreted simplistically as the conflict between the Chinese and the Western, and the identity of modern Chinese poetry gets embroiled in discourses of nationalism or nativism as pitched against cosmopolitanism and westernization. The apparent binary opposition between the local and the global or between the national and the international is a recurrent theme in the history of modern Chinese poetry.

Third, yet another axis of tension divides the individual and the collective. The purpose and intended audience of modern poetry are often simplified and reduced to two opposing camps: the ill-defined “art for art’s sake” versus the equally vague “art for life’s sake.” Both sides associate the former with individualism and the latter with social consciousness. Further, this polarization in the orientation of poetry, grossly generalized as the individual versus society, often translates into a stylistic dichotomy between obscurity and clarity of language or between modernism and realism.

Poetry is the cumulative result as well as a vivid reflection of a confluence of forces within the literary field (the evolution of a particular genre and literary history in general, literary associations and publishing agencies, individual talents) and without (social changes, economic development, and political conditions), which interact with, modify, and shape one another. The history of modern Chinese poetry is, in essence, an ongoing process of artists’ negotiation with these forces in the three mutually reinforcing binary oppositions: modernity and tradition, cosmopolitanism and nativism, and the individual and the collective. Although they may be false dichotomies, these themes underscore many debates and controversies revolving around modern poetry, accounting for both its bitter crises and its sustained creativity. They also provide an apt analytical framework within which to understand the uniqueness of modern Chinese poetry from Taiwan.

Despite linguistic and historical connections, there are significant differences between the modern poetry of Taiwan and that of post–1949 mainland China. The first and foremost difference has to do with the relationship between poetry and politics. Whereas politics has been the sole determining factor and coercive force in the literary field on the mainland, it has never played a central role in Taiwan. Although modern poetry in the formative period in May Fourth China was diverse and cosmopolitan, the dominance of Communist ideology from the 1940s through the late 1970s reduced it to political slogans in the sanctioned formula of “classical plus folk,” leaving little room for free expression of the literary imagination. The situation has only begun to change in the past two decades, during which modern poetry has slowly and painstakingly tried to walk out of the shadow of Maospeak.

Taiwan, in contrast, has always had a more open society and a more cosmopolitan culture. Despite censorship during the Japanese colonial period and under the martial law of the Nationalist regime, a civil society has evolved since the 1950s and reached maturity in the 1990s (Gold 1994). Even under the most repressive circumstances, political control was never complete; poetry still managed to carve out a space of its own outside the official discourse and to take advantage of being on the periphery. If “political poetry”—poetry written to critique a political situation or advance a political ideal—constitutes one category among many in Taiwan, it is simply inapplicable to mainland Chinese poetry written prior to the late 1970s, since all of that poetry is, by definition and in a quite direct way, political.

The second significant difference between Taiwan and mainland China is their cultural makeup. Historically, Taiwan has been exposed to and has assimilated elements of Chinese, European, Japanese, and American cultures, in addition to a rich aboriginal culture. The first modern poetry in Taiwan was written in two languages: Chinese and Japanese. Many poets are fluent in two or more languages, and Chinese, Japanese, and English are the most commonly used languages in Taiwan today. With close to universal literacy (about 93 percent) and mandatory primary and intermediate education, contemporary Taiwan also boasts a level of education that is among the highest in the world. Most poets have college degrees, and quite a few hold M.A.s and Ph.D.s from native or foreign universities. Although there is no correlation between academic qualifications and artistic achievement, the bilingual or multilingual poet moves across national and linguistic boundaries with ease and confidence, tapping into his or her multicultural experience and knowledge, whether it includes the literature, music, art, philosophy, or religion of other lands and traditions, as a boundless resource.

The notion of cultural hybridity is overused and has become a cliché in academic circles these days. To put it simply, what culture in the world is not hybrid, and why should this notion apply only to colonial cultures? One may even say that it is the inherent nature of culture to defy politically imposed boundaries; no matter how closed a society or how stringent external constraints may be, interaction with other cultures and varying degrees of conscious or unconscious fusion cannot be deterred completely. Hybridity, however, is a useful concept for understanding Taiwan because the identity of the island is inseparable from its multicultural history of the past three centuries.

In 1590, on a voyage to China, Japan, and Southeast Asia, a Portuguese vessel crossing the Pacific Ocean caught a glimpse of an island. The lush beauty of the coastal plain made Linschotten, a Dutch navigator aboard, utter in marvel: “Ilha Formosa!” This historical serendipity has since been immortalized in the Portuguese name Formosa, meaning “beautiful.” Geological and archaeological evidence indicates prehistoric human habitation on the island dating back 12,000–15,000 years. The aborigines are Austronesians who spoke a variety of languages, originally as many as twenty-four, of which only nine are extant. They are divided into two broad types based on environment: “mountain aborigines” along the Central Mountain Range, which runs from north to south of the 240-mile-long island, and “plains aborigines,” concentrated mainly on the western plains. Today, there are nine major tribes: Atayal, Saisiyat, Bunun, Tsou, Paiwan, Rukai, Puyuma, Ami, and Yami, totaling just under 380,000 in population. Each tribe has a distinct culture rich in music, dance, woodcarving, weaving, basketry, and an oral tradition of myths and folktales. Aboriginal cultures have been an inspiration for modern poets throughout the twentieth century, including both Han Chinese (e.g., Yang Chichang, Zheng Chouyu, Yang Mu, Chen Li) and aborigines (e.g., Mona Neng and Walis Nokan).

Imperial Chinese geographical records often refer to the island as a “barbarous” land, and its modern name, Taiwan, might well be related to the word “savages” (Goddard 1966:xvi). Although for centuries fishermen, pirates, and traders from southeast China had come and gone, significant immigration from the mainland did not begin until the seventeenth century, when the Dutch, having chased out their Portuguese and Spanish competitors, occupied Taiwan from 1624 to 1662. With their headquarters in Fort Zeelandia, near today’s Tainan in the southwest, the Dutch colonizers encouraged Chinese immigration to provide labor, especially for sugarcane and rice farming. Poor farmers, mostly from southern Fujian and northern Guangdong Provinces, crossed the ninety-mile-long strait and, through diligence and perseverance, settled down and cultivated the new land. This history is vividly captured by Wu Xinrong (1907–67) in “The Farmer’s Song” (“Nongmin zhi ge”). Published in New Literature of Taiwan (Taiwan xin wenxue) in July 1936, the poem describes how the Chinese settlers brought the seed of fire and urges their descendents to pass on the torch. The last stanza re-invokes the ancestors:

The theme finds elaborations in Wu Sheng’s (1944–) vignettes of rural Taiwan, written in the 1970s, which pay tribute to the continuity of the farmers’ tradition:

Long, long ago

For generations on this piece of land

Where no wealth or prosperity grows

Where no miracles are ever produced

My ancestors wiped away their sweat

And brought forth their fated children

(translated by John Balcom)

We get a quite different view of the early history of Taiwan in “Formosa, 1661,” written by Chen Li (1954–) in 1995 (page 360). Covetous of the sugarcane, banana, and silk abundant on the island, the Dutch traded fifteen bolts of cloth to the aborigines in exchange for land “the size of an ox hide.” When the deal was made, the Dutch cut the hide into thin strips, then tied them together to round off a much larger area than the aborigines had ever dreamed was possible. By making the first-person narrator a Dutch missionary sent to Taiwan to proselytize the savages, Chen not only satirizes the greed and cunning of the Europeans but also accentuates the arrogance and hypocrisy of the Christian church in deep complicity with imperialism.

After the Manchus overthrew the Ming dynasty in 1644, Zheng Chenggong (1624–62), also known as Koxinga, led an armed resistance against the new regime for years. After a major setback in Nanjing in 1659, he retreated from the mainland to the Pescadores (Penghu) and looked to Taiwan as a base for restoring the Ming. The decision took into consideration that the island, inhabited by Han Chinese, was prosperous, with “fields and gardens of over ten thousand acres, fertile plains across a thousand miles, taxes reaching tens of thousands, and ship-building and tool-manufacturing” (Chen Zhaoying 1998:36). Warmly supported by the Taiwanese Chinese, Zheng expelled the Dutch in February 1662. The moment before the besieged Dutch surrendered is imbued with much symbolism and ambivalence in Yang Mu’s (1940–) “Zeelandia” (page 261), where the gendered roles of the male colonial conqueror and the female conquered island are reversed.

Zheng’s plan to restore the Ming was doomed, however, with his untimely death. Under his son, Zheng Jing, and grandson, Zheng Keshuang, the Ming loyalists in Taiwan were defeated by the Qing admiral Shi Lang and surrendered in 1683. Taiwan was annexed to Fujian Province the same year; for the first time in history the island became part of China. In 1875, Imperial Commissioner to Taiwan Shen Baozhen (1820–79) established a prefecture in Taipei, and in 1885 Taiwan became the twenty-second province of the Qing Empire. Under the capable leadership of Shen and succeeding administrators, most notably the first governor of Taiwan, Liu Mingchuan (1836–96), a series of innovative measures were implemented, including building railways, establishing postal service, installing electric streetlights and telegraph lines, and founding modern public schools with an emphasis on Western learning. By the end of Liu’s gubernatorial tenure (1885–91), Taiwan had become a prosperous agricultural export province. Compared with the rest of the empire, which had been in decline since mid-century and did not get a reform movement off the ground till 1898, Taiwan was “a generation ahead” (Goddard 1966:xiv) and was even considered the “most advanced province of China,” with Taipei as its political, economic, and cultural center (Kuo 1973:237).

Taiwan was also successful in the military arena. In 1840, after the outbreak of the first Opium War on the mainland, the Taiwanese navy, under the command of Yao Ying, defeated the British. In 1884, during the Sino-French War, Liu Mingchuan led Taiwan to victory. But these exceptional feats could not reverse the fate of the island. When China was defeated in 1894–95, Taiwan, along with the Pescadores, was ceded to Japan under the Treaty of Shimonoseki, signed on April 17, 1895, over vehement opposition from mainland reformers. The first twenty years of colonial rule saw a large number of rebellions—from the short-lived Republic of Taiwan under the last Qing governor of Taiwan, Tang Jingsong, in 1895 to the uprising led by Yu Qingfang in 1915—all of which were brutally suppressed. But throughout the Japanese occupation period (1895–1945), native resistance never stopped. According to one study, “from 1895 to 1920 the number of persons arrested for attempts to overthrow the Japanese was never less than 8,200 in any year … from 1921 to 1930 the lowest figure for any year was 6,500; and from 1931 to 1940 the number was never below 3,450 in any one year” (Clark 1966:164).

Aiming to use the island as a stepping-stone in its conquest of China and Southeast Asia, Japan tried to make Taiwan a model colony by establishing “benign rule.” Restrictive educational, professional, social, and cultural policies were instituted. Rigid political control was imposed on one hand while economic development was promoted effectively on the other. Economic success is indicated by the steady growth of the population, from 2 million in 1895 to 3.5 million in 1920 to 6 million in 1945.

Prosperity, however, came at the expense of the Taiwanese people. Yang Hua (1906–36) depicts the plight of the common people through dramatization in “Sad Song of the Female Worker” (“Nugong beiqu,” page 57). In a more general way, he expresses the indignation and anger of all the colonized in Black Tide (Heichao ji), written while he was imprisoned for violating the Japanese “public security law”:

Toyed with.

Humiliated.

How many times now?

Though I cannot well remember,

Of what use is it to remember well?

(translated by Kirk A. Denton)

Despite its brevity and simplicity, the poem voices a powerful critique of colonialism. The laconic two opening lines, each consisting of a compound word in Chinese, state a simple, irrefutable fact. Economy of language continues into the third line, which raises a question to which the answer is also factual. If the question follows logically from the preceding lines, it is immediately rendered meaningless by the poet’s answer in lines 4–5, which poses a rhetorical question. It is futile, even absurd, to demand a tally of the humiliations and sufferings to which the colonized have been subjected, for two reasons: there are simply too many to keep track of, and even if there were a tally, who would care and who could right the wrongs? Behind the plain words, Yang’s adroit manipulation of tone and use of juxtaposition reveal the tragedy of Taiwan.

It is meaningful that Yang chooses a female worker to illustrate the suffering of the Taiwanese people, for the traditional view of women as weak and passive provides an apt symbol of the undesirable situation imposed on a colony. It is not surprising, then, that in the 1976 poem, “My Pen” (“Wo de bi”), Chen Xiuxi (1921–91) goes one step further as she turns a woman’s face into a metaphor:

Eyebrows are the colony of the eyebrow pencil

round lips the territory of the lipstick

I am happy that my pen

outlines neither eyebrows nor lips

“colony,” “territoriality”

each time I see these words

the sorrow of having been colonized rises in me again

count tonight’s sighs

caressing my veins

surging blood moves my pen

on paper moistened by tears

it fills the page:

I am Chinese

We all are Chinese

(translated by Wendy Larson)

The power of the poem derives from the originality of the metaphors comparing cosmetics to a colonizing agent and a woman’s face to a colony. Contrast is the key device. The first-person narrator rejects the “feminine” pen and picks up a writing pen, with which she asserts repeatedly her Chinese identity. More subtle is the contrast in the color images. There is a similarity between the black eyebrow pencil and the black ink of the pen, as well as between the lipstick—literally “mouth red” in Chinese—and the blood that pushes the pen across the page. In each case, the poet’s active stance replaces a passive one and her independence replaces submission. Coming from a woman, the poem is particularly meaningful, since it also implies defiance of traditional gender roles, in which a woman is expected to beautify herself to please men.

Japanese colonization of Taiwan for economic and political interests took on a harsher form toward the end of the Pacific War, when approximately 200,000 Taiwanese men were conscripted, under the name of “volunteers,” to serve in the Japanese military in Southeast Asia. Huan Fu (1922–) was among those who were sent to Java, and “Carrier Pigeon” (“Xin’ge,” page 105), written in 1964, is a moving rendition of that experience. Although it is tempting to read the poem autobiographically, the text yields another reading that may perhaps be more rewarding. This alternative reading hinges on the ambivalence with which death is described throughout the poem. The first-person narrator claims that he “did not die”; nevertheless, his death “was hidden in a forest corner” on an island in Southeast Asia, and he forgot to bring it back. The seeming contradiction and the wording (“buried”) suggest that the soldier narrator is indeed dead; the repeated disclaimer only reinforces the opposite.

The poem follows the journey of the soldier at two levels: physical/real and psychological/symbolic. Like the narrator, the poem begins with the arrival on a pristine tropical island, passes through the battle scenes, and ends with the “dark dense jungle.” The only glimpse of hope on this journey to the “heart of darkness,” where the narrator is buried, is his indomitable spirit. It is as if the soldier’s longing for homeland is so intense that even in death he refuses to rest. In Chinese, “carrier pigeon” contains the word xin, which means “message” as well as “faithfulness” or “being true (to one’s words).” Evoking the image of a carrier pigeon, the soldier-narrator vows to return home, if only in spirit, to fulfill a promise to the loved ones he left behind.

Although tragic for all concerned, the war experience was different for Taiwan than for the mainland, and we see representations from both perspectives in the work of Taiwanese poets. While Taiwan was forced to contribute to Japan’s offensive forces, China was defending itself against Japan. While Taiwan was under Japanese “benign rule,” the worst war atrocities imaginable were inflicted on the land and people of mainland China. “Memento of the Deceased” (“Yiwu”) by Li Minyong (1947–) (page 293), for example, portrays the sorrow of a Taiwanese soldier’s widow; using four metaphors in a row, the poem compares the soldier’s handkerchief to a court sentence, a corrosive acid, a landslide, and a seal, all of which put an irreversible end to her youth and happiness. In contrast, Bai Ling’s (1951–) “Childhood Years, Part I: The 1940s” (“Tongnian,” page 322) remembers the war from a child’s point of view: bomb explosions are like cotton candy, bomb pits like popcorn, and tanks and airplanes like toys. The mother scavenging for food in the field screams when she spots a human arm, but the child narrator naively thinks it belongs to a broken doll. The understatement, through a temporal and perceptual distancing, helps bring the horror of war to the fore.

Still another perspective is presented in Jiao Tong’s (1956–) “The Demon Platoon Leader” (“Mogui fenduizhang”), written in 1993:

Yamaguchi Shintaro held the rank of second-class private and was assigned to the 124th Infantry Company. He was a fierce fighter, distinguished for the blazing intensity of his performance in battle. Everyone honored him with the title “Demon Platoon Leader,” and he received an imperial medal of honor.

The Demon Platoon Leader survived a hundred battles. He was only wounded once, on the Siberian Front, when seven regiments lost a whole regiment’s worth of fighting strength to syphilis. Thank heaven for penicillin: he escaped from the jaws of death and was sent to the Chinese battlefield.

From the time the Imperial Army landed at Hangzhou Cove until it took Nanjing, our intrepid platoon leader won the highest favor with bold exploits of raping four women each day.

The Demon Platoon Leader was a man of exceptional endowments. Each centiliter of his sperm contained 25,999 ferocious spermatozoa, with a volume per ejaculation of 20 milliliters. Each month he could produce seventeen gallons of highly corrosive sperm fluid. When the moon was full, his third testicle would appear, and his metal-hard penis would lengthen by 13 centimeters.

Patriotism smoldered in the heart of the Demon Platoon Leader: before each act of intercourse, he stood at attention and sang the national anthem.

(translated by Denis Mair)

Of all the war crimes, the satire focuses on those committed against women by Japanese soldiers. That a whole regiment was lost to syphilis suggests how pervasive rape was. That the private is honored with medals indicates that rape was in fact encouraged and rewarded by military commanders. Drawing a parallel between valor on the battlefield and sexual exploits, the poem not only critiques the violence of both war and rape but, more poignantly, debunks two popular myths that still cause much injustice and suffering: the equation of masculinity with sexual aggression and the use of patriotism and nationalism to justify in-humanities perpetuated by one racial or ethnic group against another. The entire poem is cast in the pseudo-language of historiography from a positively Japanese point of view. The hyperbole with which it describes—in fact pays tribute to—the platoon leader’s superhuman endowment renders the atrocity more chilling and disgusting.

During the colonial period, Taiwanese people were not only barred from the political arena but also discriminated against in the educational system. The colonial government provided basic education but offered few opportunities for advanced learning. The cream of the crop was allowed to go into medicine and often received training in Japan. Between 1915 and 1922, the number of Taiwanese students in Japan increased dramatically, from just over 300 to more than 2,400 (Peng 1991:4).

Ironically, when these youths went to Japan, they formed organizations and launched publications that mounted explicit or implicit resistance against colonization and asserted a Taiwanese identity. The first journal in Taiwanese history, Taiwanese Youth (Taiwan qingnian), was founded by overseas students in Tokyo in June 1920 and moved back home two years later under the name Taiwan. The first literary magazine published in Taiwan, Literature and Art (Wenyi), was founded in 1924. Formosa was also founded by overseas Taiwanese students, including Wu Yongfu (1913–), Zhang Wenhuan (1909–78), Su Weixiung, Wang Baiyuan (1901–65), Wu Kunhuang (1909–), Weng Nao (1906–40?), and others in Tokyo in July 1933. In Taipei, writers founded The Vanguard (Xianfa budui)—later renamed The First Line (Diyi xian)—in January 1935. Other magazines in the 1920s and ’30s include: Everyone (Renren), Modern Life (Xiandai shenghuo), Morning Bell (Xiaozhong), The Equator (Chidao), and Southern Tune (Nanyin). The newspaper Taiwanese People’s Journal (Taiwan minbao) was founded in April 1923; originally published in Japan twice a month, it gradually evolved into a Chinese daily published in Taiwan beginning in July 1927. Despite Japanese censorship, these and other publications provided a fertile ground for literary and cultural development in Taiwan (Chen Shaoting 1977).

One development that was to have a profound impact on Taiwanese culture was the vernacular movement initiated by Huang Chengcong and Huang Chaoqin in early 1923. Enlightenment and modernization were clearly their objectives, and they looked to the mainland as their model. As Huang Chengcong reasoned, “If our compatriots understand the vernacular, we can purchase new modern books, newspapers, and magazines from China to enlighten our stagnant society” (Li 1979:14). In more detail, Huang Chaoqin explained that classical Chinese was an impediment to modernization due to its extreme difficulty and inaccessibility to common people, who did not have the leisure or ability to study it. Citing the recent success of the vernacular movement on the mainland, where it had even won the support of such great classical scholars as Zhang Binglin (1869–1936) and Liang Qichao (1873–1929), Huang criticized Taiwan as conservative and backward and offered practical advice not unlike that of Huang Chengcong: “Those gentlemen who wish to study the vernacular can consult the Shanghai Commerce Press” (Li 1979:32). There is no doubt that the vernacular movement paved the way for modern poetry in Taiwan; it was the first effort toward a native literature in Taiwan and a precursor to the Native Literature Movement of the 1970s and poetry written in Hokkien, which has gained much currency since the 1980s.

At the time when both Huangs wrote from Japan, a young man from Taiwan named Zhang Qingrong (1902–55) was studying at Beijing Normal College. Inspired by the Literary Revolution that had swept the mainland a few years earlier, he published “A Letter to the Youth of Taiwan” (“Zhi Taiwan qingnian de yi feng xin”), under the penname Zhang Wojun (“my army”), in Taiwanese People’s Journal on April 21, 1924. In the letter, he attacked classical poetry as decorative and dead, and those who wrote it as slaves to archaic poetic conventions. After returning to Taiwan in October of the same year, Zhang wrote another critique titled “The Terrible Literary Scene in Taiwan” (“Zaogao de Taiwan wenxuejie”), which triggered a debate between the old school of poets and the new. Like the New Poetry Movement in China led by Hu Shi, the call for modern poetry in Taiwan embodied iconoclasm, aspirations to modernity, and a new orientation of poetry. As editor of the Taiwanese People’s Journal from 1924 to 1926, Zhang introduced both the theory and creative work of modern poetry from the mainland. He also published, in Taipei in December 1925, the first book of modern Chinese poetry in Taiwanese history. Titled Love in a Chaotic City (Luandu zhi lian), the collection records Zhang’s romantic relationship while living in Beijing.

There is another line of development in the history of modern poetry in Taiwan. The earliest modern poems published in Taiwan were in fact written in Japanese. Authored by Zhui Feng (“chasing the wind”), the pen name of Xie Chunmu (1902–67), the sequence of four poems under the title “Imitations of Poetry” (“Shi de mofang”) was written in 1923 and published in Taiwan on April 10, 1924, slightly earlier than Zhang Wojun’s work.

By the time modern poetry appeared, Taiwan had been ruled by Japan for thirty years. Modern Japanese poetry began to emerge in the late nineteenth century. The first collection of modern poetry in translation appeared in 1882 and free verse flourished from 1912 to 1922; the latter is best represented by Kotaro Takamura (1883–1956), author of the 1914 Itinerary, and Sakutaro Hagiwara (1886–1942), whose Howling at the Moon was published in 1917. There are many parallels between modern Chinese and modern Japanese poetry. Both had been undergoing a transition from tradition to modernity since the late nineteenth century, and by the 1920s both had taken free verse as a vital new form. (It should be noted, however, that a significant difference is that while modern Chinese poetry rejects all traditional forms, modern Japanese poetry continues to use some: while it is common for a modern Japanese poem to be written as a tanka or haiku, a modern Chinese poem in the form of a “quatrain” [jueju] or “regulated verse” [lushi] simply does not exist.) Both were greatly inspired by Western poetry, first through translation but increasingly in the original as the poets acquired foreign languages. More specifically, it is interesting to note that in both cases the introduction of Western poetry began with romanticism, followed by symbolism, naturalism, and various strands of high modernism. Further, many of the pioneers in both China and Japan had first-hand experience with the West. Hu Shi studied at Cornell and Columbia Universities in the 1910s; Takamura studied sculpture in America, France, and England from 1906 to 1910. Xu Zhimo (1897–1931) and Wen Yiduo (1899–1946), leaders of the Crescent School, attended graduate school in the United States in the 1920s, and Junzaburo Nishiwaki (1894–1982), the most important Japanese surrealist, studied English literature at Oxford and published his first book of poetry, Spectrum, in English in 1925.

From the beginning, then, modern poetry in Taiwan has drawn on two traditions: mainland Chinese and Japanese. These should be seen not as diametrically opposed but as complementary and mutually reinforcing because they were often inspired by the same sources. For example, Yang Hua’s petit poems were influenced by those of Bing Xin (1900–99) on the mainland, but the immense popularity of the miniature form in China in the 1920s was itself the result of multicultural influences, including at least ancient Greek epigrams, Rabindranath Tagore’s (1861–1941) short lyrics, Japanese haiku, and classical Chinese poetry. While many pioneers of modern poetry on the mainland, such as Lu Xun, Guo Moruo (1892–1978), and Mu Mutian (1900–71), studied in Japan, the same can be said of many Taiwanese poets, who had extensive interaction with Japanese poets in Japan as well as in Taiwan during the colonial period.

Another example of the complex genealogy of modern poetry in Taiwan is the appearance of surrealism. Although there were cursory references in Xiandai (or Les Contemporains), a modernist journal published in Shanghai from 1932 to 1935, the first serious introduction to and experiment in surrealism in modern Chinese poetry was carried out by Le Moulin Poetry Society (Fongche shishe), founded by four Taiwanese and three Japanese poets in 1933 (Ye Di 1996). Consciously veering away from the more popular trend of realism, which emphasized the writer as a spokesperson for the oppressed common people, Le Moulin poets developed a “pale-skinned aesthetic” (“Sea of Flowers” [“Hua zhi hai”], page 65). Emphasizing the senses as the gateway to reality, these poets created a world filled with superimposed, often synaesthetic, images and subtle moods. Nature, in contrast to the city, is immanently sensual, and there is perfect correspondence between the poet and nature. Although they sought harmony and unity between the flesh and the spirit, Le Moulin poets were besieged by ambivalence, confusion, and frustration—in short, a sense of defeat—which is reflected in their work. Women figure prominently as a paradoxical symbolic representation of ultimate sensuality and ultimate spirituality.

A good example is Yang Chichang’s (1908–94) “The Nun” (“Nigu”). Written in December 1934, the poem depicts the sexual awakening of a young Buddhist nun named Duanduan (page 60). At the beginning of the poem, the open window suggests a bridge to the outside world, the world of the senses necessarily blocked off from the sacred shrine of Buddhist deities. The contrast in color images is used effectively to intimate the conflict between the nun’s sexual awakening and her religious belief: the white of Duanduan’s arms and breasts versus the red and green of the statues in the prayer hall. Interestingly, the poet reverses the traditional symbolism of the colors: white is associated with the body and sexual desire rather than with spirituality, whereas red and green are associated with Buddhism instead of the mundane world of “red dust.” Thus, contrary to Buddhist teachings, the poet implicitly approves carnal desire by elevating it to a higher status.

The tension between sexual desire and religious belief reaches climax in the last part of the poem. There are sexual overtones in Duanduan’s vision of the Buddhist statues coming alive: Weituo’s sword is clearly phallic, and even the image of the Arhat who literally “mounts” the tiger is sexually suggestive. Yet the fact that Duanduan faints when the statues come alive suggests a profound sense of shame and guilt on her part. At the end of the poem, as she comes to in the morning and begins her daily routine of sutra chanting, Duanduan calls out to her mother. By evoking a secular tie that has supposedly been severed upon her “renouncing the world” and joining the Buddhist order, the poet not only intimates Duanduan’s regret and inability to repress sexual desire but also implicitly questions the unnaturalness of religious celibacy. To the extent that Duanduan sacrifices her virginity to the gods in a symbolic sense, her relationship to them is not any purer or less “illusory” than physical attachments between humans. Finally, sarcasm underscores the poem in the nun’s name, Duanduan, as the character “duan” connotes propriety and conformity to conventions.

Their contemporaries regarded Le Moulin poets as “decadent,” “aesthetist,” and “ugly” (Liu 2000), but this attitude reduces literature to sociology and art to a vehicle of moral teaching. The fact is that the teaching that poetry does is most effective and lasting when it seems least like teaching. The critique of traditional religion that we have seen in Yang’s “The Nun” is subtle but powerful. Another fine example of reflection on tradition is Li Zhangrui’s (?–1951) “This Family” (“Zhe yijia”), published in 1936:

The color of bricks passed down from generations

Chokes on the early autumn sunset

Memory lies dead beneath the pomelo tree in the yard

The tradition of this family is piled on with

The green fatigue of branches and twigs. Soon

A new couplet will be pasted on the door, but

A wordless burden penetrates sleep ….

No words are needed for blood to coagulate

—What’s buried beneath the pomelo …

The maiden in a long gown even

Her bright forehead dims

(That thing—don’t you know it?)

Quickly uttered words, unknown to her ancestors

Spread on her rouged lips

(translated by Michelle Yeh)

The image of the pomelo tree symbolizes family lineage, but “fatigue” has taken over and it is headed toward oblivion (“memory is dead”) and death (as suggested by the images of “choking” and “sleep”). It is an old Chinese custom to paste a couplet, written in calligraphy on red paper, on the door to usher in the lunar New Year. In the poem, however, the custom continues but brings no renewal. By juxtaposing written words and “wordless burden,” the poet suggests a separation of form and substance. “Burden” is further associated with “blood” in the next line, since both have no use for words. Why such pessimism? The answer is revealed in the second stanza, in which the poet chooses the image of a young woman to drive home the theme of rupture or discontinuity. Although the same blood flows in the family, words have caused a break in the lineage. There are a number of contrasts between the first and second stanzas: between the old house and the young woman, the faded bricks of the building and her bright red mouth, the “wordless burden” and her “quickly uttered words.” The maiden’s dimming forehead and the vague reference to “that thing” hint at the possibility that she is lovesick. When she opens her mouth, probably coyly to refute someone’s speculation, the words that she speaks belong to another language than that of her ancestors. If we interpret the family metaphorically, the poem, at one level at least, expresses the sadness of colonial Taiwan.

Although both Chinese and Japanese were taught at public schools for the Taiwanese before 1937, programs of Japanization, known as Kōminka, were vigorously promoted by the colonial government and included adopting Japanese-style names, speaking Japanese at home, converting to Shintoism, and adopting Japanese customs and lifestyle in general. Those who conformed were rewarded with social prestige (e.g., a plaque) and material privileges (e.g., more food supplies) (Chou 1996). In April 1937, three months before Japan launched a full-fledged invasion of China, Chinese was banned at school and in the media, and only Japanese—referred to as the “national language” (kokugo in Japanese)—was allowed in public. Thus, Taiwanese youths who grew up in the last eight years of colonial rule received little education in Chinese, although typically they spoke Hokkien or Hakka—the language of another major subethnic group on the island at home.

In Japanese-occupied Taiwan, as in other colonies, writers had to face the painful dilemma that their resistance against colonial rule had to be carried out in the colonizer’s language. In the 1935 poem “Thought,” Wu Xinrong refers to his generation as “poets with no language.” Comparing the situation of the Taiwanese poet to that of Tagore, the Nobel laureate from India who wrote much of his work in English, Wu asks: “What do they [his writings] really bring for the Indians?” That such introspection and self-questioning were prevalent among Taiwanese poets can be seen in the fact that many did write in Chinese. The spirit of independence also lies behind the various efforts to promote a literature written in Hokkien from the mid-1920s to 1945. From 1930 to 1933 Huang Shihui advocated “homeland literature” (xiangtu wenxue) and triggered a debate on whether Chinese or Taiwanese (Hokkien) should be the medium for Taiwanese literature (Yang 1996). In practice, much of the literature in the 1920s, ’30s, and ’40s was a mix of Chinese and Hokkien. These early experiments were to inspire later poets who began to write poetry in Hokkien in the 1970s, such as Lin Zongyuan (1935–), Xiang Yang (1955–), Huang Jinlian (1947–), Huang Shugen (1946–), and Lin Yongmin (1955–) (Zheng 1990). They also paved the way for the eventual appearance and recognition of Hakka poetry in the 1990s.

When the island was returned to China in 1945 under the Cairo Agreement, the cultural difference between mainland China and Taiwan, especially in terms of linguistic background and practices, was significant. Ironically, although Taiwan had always identified with China as the motherland throughout the Japanese colonial period, the mother with whom she was finally reunited after fifty years was more or less a stranger whose language she could hardly comprehend. In April 1946 the Committee on Popularization of the National Language (Guoyu puji weiyuanhui) was formed, and branches were set up in every county in Taiwan within two years. More than two hundred new journals and newspapers mushroomed, many in both Chinese and Japanese (Ye Shitao 1990:145). Bilingual publications did not last long, however. On October 24, 1946, on the eve of the first anniversary of the retrocession of Taiwan to China, Japanese was banned in the media, which marked the next step in the Guomindang’s “resinicization” or decolonization effort. Some of the titles of the essays in the last Japanese edition of China Daily (Zhonghua ribao) suggest that although not without a touch of uncertainty, Taiwanese writers supported the new policy as a positive step toward unifying the people: “What Will Happen to Taiwan?” (Long Yingzong), “Goodbye, Japanese Edition” (Chen Huiyu), “Wait Till the Day of Fluent Chinese” (Chen Shengsheng), “Lift the Spirit and Learn the National Language” (Sun Linmao) (Ying 1985:13).

Granted, Japanese did not disappear completely after 1946; for a while Japanese books were still published. Efforts to bridge the two linguistic groups also continued: Japanese works by Taiwanese writers were translated and published in newspapers and magazines such as Everyone, edited by Yang Kui (1905–85), and seminars for writers were organized, notably by Ge Lei, editor of Bridge (Qiao), the literary supplement of New Life Daily (Xinsheng bao) (Peng 1995). However, the ban on Japanese in the media deprived most Taiwanese of access to new information, which deepened their distrust of the government (Ye Shitao 1990:146).

Inflation, devaluation of the old currency, food shortages, unemployment, corruption of the Nationalist government under the administration of Chen Yi—these and other factors contributed to the escalating tension in the days following retrocession. The brewing discontent of the Taiwanese people exploded in the February 28 Incident in 1947, during which the Nationalist army was sent in from the mainland to suppress local uprisings. In the process, thousands of innocent Taiwanese, including many members of the elite, were killed and more arrested and incarcerated; many new immigrants from the mainland were also killed by the Taiwanese.

The “2–28 Incident” had severe long-term consequences (Lai, Myers & Wei 1991). It aggravated the already difficult transition from Japanese colonialism to Nationalist rule. The fragile trust that had been established between the Nationalist government and the Taiwanese people—especially the intellectuals—after the war was largely destroyed. Subsequently, the regime stepped up its control and, as the civil war on the mainland worsened and retreat to Taiwan seemed imminent, tightened its grip even more, ushering in the era of White Terror in the 1950s and 1960s. The official discourse can be characterized as one of nationalism, anticommunism, and conservatism (Winckler 1994; Lee 1996).

After 1949 Hokkien was forbidden in public, severely restricted in the media, and stigmatized socially. Certain aspects of Taiwanese culture were regarded as remnants of Japanese colonialism and were categorically dismissed. Taiwanese literature from the Japanese colonial period was also banned, along with much pre-1949 modern Chinese literature written by “leftist” writers, i.e., those who lived under the Communist regime after 1949. When two million refugees came from the mainland in 1949, disoriented and stressed, they merged into a society that had just gone through a traumatic event, discussion of which was to remain a political taboo until 1987. The disenfranchisement of the Taiwanese people, along with their unspeakable anger and resentment toward the ruling GMD, would drive a wedge between the Taiwanese and the recent mainland émigre’s for decades to come, with profound social, political, and cultural ramifications.

The intensely complicated modern history of Taiwan thus presents an unusual case of postcolonial culture. While many other modern countries in Asia, Latin America, and Africa that achieved independence had to—or still have to—wrestle with the issue of using the colonizer’s language, postwar Taiwan’s situation was reversed. Taiwanese writers in 1949 were caught between two languages yet could hardly identify with either: Japanese, the former colonizer’s language that they were no longer allowed to speak, and Chinese, the language that was rightfully their mother tongue but that they could not speak. In short, Taiwanese writers were faced with the unique quandary of having no language of their own. This condition of “cultural aphasia” exerted a far-reaching impact on the development of modern Chinese poetry in Taiwan.

First of all, the generation of Taiwanese writers who were in their twenties when the war ended were handicapped linguistically: they were unable to continue to write and publish either in Japanese, which was banned, or in Chinese, of which they had yet to achieve full command. Some simply gave up for this reason, although a few would continue to write in Japanese for the drawer or publish their work in Japan. Most of those who persisted would need fully ten years to acquire enough proficiency in Chinese to write and publish in that language. While the second group constitutes “the translingual generation” (kuayue yuyan de yidai), a term coined by Lin Hengtai (1924–) in 1967, the first group may well be called “the silenced generation.”

Second, the lacuna thus created on the poetry scene in the postwar period was filled mainly by poets who had recently sought refuge in Taiwan. Although a few Taiwanese poets made a smooth transition from Japanese to Chinese, such as Wu Yingtao (1916–71), Lin Hengtai, Jin Lian (1928–), and Zhang Yanxun (1925–), most of the poets active in the 1950s, including Ji Xian (previously under the pen name Luyishi, 1913–), Qin Zihao (1912–63), Zhong Dingwen (pen name Fan Cao, 1914–), Li Sha (1925–), Ge Xianning (1908–61), Yang Huan (1930–54), and Yu Guangzhong (1928–), had previously published on the mainland and a few had established a substantial reputation there. With their credentials, some of them were able to obtain editorial positions in state-run newspapers and magazines, become teachers of workshops and correspondence courses sponsored by the Nationalist government, and in general play an active role on the literary scene.

This state of affairs is evident in publications and other related activities. The first poetry journal published in postwar Taiwan was New Poetry Weekly (Xinshi zhoukan); founded in November 1951, it was edited by Ji Xian (issues 1–26) and Qin Zihao (from issue 27 onward). Qin was also the editor of the Blue Star Weekly (Lanxing zhoukan), a supplement to Public Opinion Daily (Gonglun bao), founded in June 1954; after the first 110 issues he was succeeded by Yu Guangzhong. In addition, Qin served as the poetry teacher at the Chinese Literature and Art Correspondence School in the 1950s and 1960s. When Today’s New Poetry (Jinri xinshi) was founded in 1957, its deputy directors were Zhong Lei (1920–) and Ji Xian, and the chief editor was Shangguan Yu (1924–). Also founded in 1957 was the Literary Star (Wenxing), whose poetry section was edited by Yu Guangzhong.

Books of modern poetry published between 1949 and 1955 were almost all authored by new émigrés; besides some of the poets mentioned above, others include Jin Jun (1910–), Mo Ren (1920–), Wang Yan (1920–66), Deng Yuping (1925–85), Chu Qing (1926–), Fang Si (1925–), Sha Mu (1928–86), Rongzi (1928–), Xia Jing (1925–), and Zheng Chouyu (1933–). Conspicuous exceptions to the list are Wu Yingtao, Lin Hengtai, and Ye Di (1931–), three poets who made a smooth transition from Japanese to Chinese (Zhang Mo 1992:3–9).

Finally, all the poetry societies formed in the 1950s, including the Modernist School, Blue Star, and Epoch, were dominated by émigrépoets. Although the journals and poetry societies by no means excluded Taiwanese poets, the émigrés’ linguistic skills clearly provided a valuable form of cultural capital, which put them in an advantageous position.

Faced with the threat of military attack from the mainland, the Nationalist government adopted a hard anticommunist line in the 1950s and 1960s, backed by military assistance and economic aid from the United States. While control of the media and censorship served as deterrents to politically incorrect literature and art, there were attractive incentives for those writers and artists who actively supported the official cultural policy. As early as October 1949, the literary supplement of New Life Daily initiated discussions on “combat literature and art.” On December 16, 1949, the inaugural issue of the literary supplement of the National Daily (Minzu bao), the former incarnation of the United Daily (Lianhe bao), announced: “The current responsibility of all workers of literature and art—to engage in combat to fight back the enemies” (Ying 1985:29).

Two important incentives were publication and prizes. In March 1950 the Committee of Prizes in Chinese Literature and Art (Zhonghua wenyi jiangjin weiyuanhui) was formed. Twice a year, usually on May 5 and November 12 (the latter being the anniversary of Dr. Sun Yat-sen’s birthday), the committee gave out lucrative prizes in various genres, including poetry and song lyrics. It also offered generous honoraria on a regular basis for selected works, which were published in the official press. By the time the committee was dissolved in July 1957, more than a thousand writers had received prizes and honoraria from it. The criterion for selection states that the work must “use many literary and artistic techniques to raise nationalist consciousness and convey the meaning of anticommunism and countering-the-Soviets” (Ge & Shangguan 1965:81–82). The honorarium for a selected poem was NT$100–200, and the first prize for a long poem was NT$1,000. Considering that the average income of a state employee was a little over NT$100 a month, those rewards were extremely attractive. The titles of the song lyrics that won the top prizes in May 1950 indicate the successful implementation of the cultural policy: “Anticommunist March” (Zhao Youpei), “Anticommunist and Counter-the-Soviets Song” (Zhang Ganlin), and “Protect My Taiwan” (Sun Ling). Many other organizations of a similar nature were formed, such as the Chinese Youth Writing Association (August 1953) and the Chinese Women’s Writing Association (May 1955). Needless to say, the poetry written under this cultural policy was formulaic, nationalistic, and sentimental. It was an obstacle that modern poetry would have to overcome in order to grow and excel.

Besides the official discourse, another formidable challenge to modern poetry in postwar Taiwan was its low status vis-à-vis classical poetry. Classical poetry had a long history in Taiwan, starting before Zheng Chenggong. The first noted poet, Shen Wenguang, came to Taiwan in 1649, and the first classical Chinese poetry club, East Chanting Society (Dongyin she), was founded in 1685. When Taiwan was ceded to Japan in 1895, it is estimated that there were more than two hundred poetry clubs on the island (Chen Zhaoying 1998:8). Although the colonial government promoted Japanization and suppressed Chinese culture, classical Chinese poetry was preserved because of its prestige in traditional Japanese culture. Thus it was written not only by Taiwanese poets but also by Japanese elites in Taiwan. This is evident in the fact that when the colonial government banned Chinese in 1937, the only exception was the “Chinese Poetry Column” (Hanshi lan) in the newspapers.

The tradition of classical Chinese poetry in Taiwan, in short, was transferred from the mainland and remained unbroken despite Japanese colonialism. Although by the 1920s the composition of classical poetry had become a polite social function more than a serious literary endeavor, it continued to be held in high regard. In “The Terrible Literary Scene in Taiwan,” Zhang Wojun mounted an attack on those who wrote classical poetry to advance their worldly fame and curry favor with the ruling regime. He was worried that even young people were engaged in this frivolous activity:

They write poetry because it is an easy way to gain fame (but what kind of fame is that?) and takes no effort (actually poetry is not as easy as they think). From time to time, His Honor the Governor invites them to tea and asks them to compose poetry; from time to time, poetry clubs, too, invite them to drink wine and compose poetry. Their names are printed in newspapers and they are often bestowed with gifts. Therefore, never mind life or death, they keep on making a fuss about writing poetry (actually they are just fooling around).

(Zhang 1979:65)

Despite the relative success of modern poetry as a new form of writing since the 1920s, it could not compete with classical poetry in social status. As late as the early 1950s, the disparity between the two genres was still significant. In the editorial in the second issue of Modern Poetry Quarterly (Xiandaishi jikan), Ji Xian laments: “There is no need to conceal the fact that New Poetry is looked down on by most people” (August 20, 1953). This and other comments show that those who wrote classical poetry tended to belong to the cultural establishment:

In view of the huge gathering that Old Poetry organized on Poet’s Day, some [fellow modern poets] become nervous, worrying that New Poetry might get trampled on and die an early death. Actually this concern is unnecessary…. Old Poetry is in the court, New Poetry is in the wild. Those of us who write New Poetry have neither power nor connections. Further, we are hard-pressed financially; we use our own money to publish poetry journals and can barely afford it.

(Modern Poetry Quarterly no. 15 [Aug. 1956]:80)

Even on college campuses Old Poetry enjoyed more popularity. At the Gaoxiong Medical School, for instance, students were encouraged to write classical poetry, which was published in the student magazine. Modern poetry was not to be seen in the school publication until 1963, and a modern poetry society was founded in 1964 (Amoeba 1985:327). Modern poetry first entered the standardized national curricula in Taiwan in 1968, when two poems were included in a middle school textbook of Chinese literature (Xu 1990:115).

Classical poetry has always enjoyed prestige in Chinese literature and culture, but the political climate in postwar Taiwan reinforced its emblematic stature. For the Nationalist Party, to uphold the classical Chinese tradition was part of the justification for its claim to be the only legitimate government of China. A parallel case can be made of the state’s preservation and promotion of the Peking opera, elevated to the status of “national drama” (guoju), as another “quintessential symbol of Chinese history and culture” (Guy 1996:2). There was no contradiction between giving literary prizes to anticommunist poetry in the modern form and granting a higher status to classical poetry. All evidence indicates that in the first decade or two of postwar Taiwan, the legitimacy crisis of modern poetry was far from over. Thus, to establish an identity, modern poetry had first to distinguish itself from classical poetry and second to find resources for publication and other related activities.

The standard history of modern poetry in Taiwan usually refers to the three major poetry societies as constituting the three legs of a tripod: the Modernist School, founded by Ji Xian in 1956 (preceded by Modern Poetry Quarterly, founded in 1953); the Blue Star, founded by Qin Zihao, Zhong Dingwen, Xia Jing, and others in 1954; and the Epoch, founded by Zhang Mo (1931–), Luo Fu (1928–), and Ya Xian (1932–) in 1954. In my view, the first played a leading role and deserves closer attention. More than any other journal or society, Modern Poetry Quarterly and the Modernist School brought about significant changes in the ecology of the poetry scene—through creative work, theoretical discourse, and related activities—and exerted a profound influence on contemporary and later poets.

According to Ji Xian, classical poetry was “in the court” and modern poetry was “in the wild.” If classical poetry was a hobby in which the elites dabbled at leisure, modern poetry was a calling, requiring the poet’s wholehearted dedication. Thus, Ji Xian advised young poets: “First of all, adopt a serious attitude toward writing and do some research on what constitutes New Poetry…. Don’t pick up your pen hastily, and don’t rush to publish your work!” (Modern Poetry Quarterly no. 3 [Aug. 1953]). An important function of Modern Poetry Quarterly and other privately funded poetry journals in the 1950s was to assert the independence of poetic art from other pursuits. In view of the disparity in social status between Old and New Poetry, modern poets emphasized that the only criteria applicable to poetry were those intrinsic and unique to the art form. Poetry was personified as God of Poetry (Shishen) (e.g., Peng Bangzhen’s [1919– ] “Definition of Poetry” [“Shi de dingyi”]). While equality and justice did not always exist in society, poets upheld these ideals in their work:

In the world of poetry, all are equal. Whoever has talent can freely enter and stay with no strings attached. All that the great God of Poetry cares about is whether a poem is good or bad. Whatever your social status is, whether you are rich and powerful, or poor and lowly … he really doesn’t care. If your poetic talent is truly great, even if you are a peddler or servant, you will be treated like a guest of honor in his palace … on the other hand, if your poetic talent is mediocre and poor, even if you are an important official, you cannot receive his kindness.

(Modern Poetry Quarterly no. 15:81)

Emulating the Literary Revolution of 1917, Ji Xian declared a second revolution whose goal was to further modern poetry. Responding to the still frequent use of rhyme and regular form at the time, he made a sharp distinction between “poetry” and “song,” rejecting the latter as a remnant of antiquated tradition. Also implicit in his discourse is the dissociation of modern poetry from state-endorsed, politically oriented verse, which closely resembled anticommunist songs. Once freed from the conventions of song, poetry is no longer bound by a predetermined form but is free to develop its own; the content determines the form, not the other way around. This idea opened up a wide vista for literary experimentation, including Lin Hengtai’s concrete poetry and Jin Lian’s “ciné-poèms.”

The rise of prose poetry in the 1950s was therefore no accident. Although it was first introduced and experimented with by Lu Xun and Liu Bannong (1891– 1934) in China in the 1920s, the genre was insignificant and virtually disappeared from the mainland after the 1930s. Among possible causes are the influence of the Crescent Poets, who advocated the “architecture” of form, and the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War, which gave birth to a “literature of resistance” that included the heavily rhymed “street-corner poetry” and “poetry for recitation.” The first major writer of prose poetry in modern Chinese history, Shang Qin (1930–), appeared in Taiwan in the 1950s. Influenced by French surrealism, Shang Qin celebrates the world of authenticity, innocence, and mystery, which lies just beyond the mundane world ruled by hypocrisy and conventional norms (M. Yeh 1996). His prose poetry from the 1950s and ’60s has served as a model for later Taiwanese poets, most notably Su Shaolian (1949–) and Du Ye (1953–). This minor tradition of prose poetry in Taiwan constitutes yet another significant difference from mainland China (M. Yeh 2000).

Ji Xian and the Modernist School sought to instill in the younger generation a “professional” attitude—a spiritual identification with poetry that excluded all extrinsic concerns and motivations. The young Zheng Chouyu likens “the poet’s profession” to running an inn in a vast desert that provides a haven for lonely travelers. He sings of the poet’s genealogy in “Life in the Mountains” (“Shan ju”):

Displayed above is the poet’s family tree.

Oh, the blood relation of wisdom needs extension.

So I carve transparent names deeply in the whole sky

And sing. Here alone and undaunted I can be high-sounding.

(translated by Shiu-Pang Almberg)

The high respect and seriousness accorded to poetry as art and the space provided for free expression by Modern Poetry Quarterly and other journals in the 1950s made possible a new generation of poets in postwar Taiwan. Many of them were students, quite a few were servicemen, but with rare exceptions all were outside the cultural establishment and came from the middle or lower-middle economic strata. Although not explicitly defiant of authority, they celebrated individuality, even eccentricity.

Individuality was essential to asserting the independence of poetry from the formulaic genre endorsed by the establishment on the one hand, and from the superior-positioned classical style on the other. A third aspect of the social-cultural milieu to which modern poetry reacted in the 1950s and 1960s was popular culture, which modern poets saw as dominated by philistines and consisting of commercialized art. Xiu Tao’s (1934–) “The Newly Castrated” (“Xin yan zhe”), published in Modern Poetry Quarterly in 1957, presents a succinct but poignant picture:

When she told me the price for that Debussy

I became a castrated man

Helpless

I walked away

Though she still pressed me with her disdainful eyes

And drew WM on the glass counter with her breasts

(translated by Michelle Yeh)

The first-person narrator cannot even afford an album—probably a pirated copy!—of classical music. When art runs up against the dollar sign, it has no choice but surrender. As a metaphor, castration vividly captures the sense of defeat and frustration that he experiences, but it goes further. The saleslady is a perfect embodiment of society’s values, which equate manhood with earning power and money with success. The last two lines drive home the point, as from behind the counter the saleslady seems to taunt the narrator with her explicit sexuality as he walks away. The English letters “WM” pictographically evoke her breasts; they are also the first letters of “woman” and “man.” Thus, the poem makes a sarcastic comment on society from the viewpoint of an economically disadvantaged poet.

All of the above explains the recurrence of the image of the poet as solitary wanderer, rebel, eccentric, or even madman. Running through the work of the 1950s is the opposition between the singular “I” and the plural “They,” based on vast differences in lifestyle and values. Understandably, many modern poets satirize conformity and empathize with those on the periphery, whether the poor and downtrodden or the faceless individual whose daily struggle and triumph define what is human. It is also in this context that we can understand the widespread interest in surrealism and other forms of the avant garde, which linked poetry and visual arts in a fruitful alliance in the 1950s and ’60s. The radical approach to writing poetry parallels the fearless rebellion poets mounted against all conventions—social as well as literary. In their best work, poets such as Ya Xian, Shang Qin, Luo Fu, Lin Hengtai, and many others molded a language uniquely fit for their probe into the human condition, and their work has exerted a long-lasting influence on subsequent generations of poets.

The journals that nurtured many poets were all independently funded. Modern Poetry Quarterly, for example, was financed almost entirely by Ji Xian himself. Although subscriptions increased from five hundred in 1953 to two thousand by 1956, the journal was still hard-pressed to make ends meet. In the editor’s postscript to issue 21 in 1958, Ji Xian could not help crying out: “Poverty is our Achilles’ heel! … This issue came out late for the simple reason that I didn’t have money to buy paper and pay for the printing costs…. As to why this issue was finally published, it’s because I sold a ring of much sentimental value and a big bag of expensive books. I also pawned some winter clothes. In addition, a friend generously donated a few hundred dollars.” Similarly, the three editors of the Epoch Poetry Quarterly took turns going to the pawnshop in order to keep their journal going.

Therefore, it is not surprising that when negotiating with the dominant discourse, the modern poetry movement in the ’50s and ’60s adopted a completely different tactic from its way of dealing with classical poetry. Confrontation or explicit defiance would not only carry serious political risks but also do little to help advance modern poetry. Given the fact that all cultural resources were in the hands of the establishment, many modern poets chose to participate in the anticommunist discourse and use the cultural capital they thus obtained to sustain their own poetry journals. In doing so, they transformed the literary field gradually. Ji Xian, for instance, repeatedly won awards from the Committee of Prizes in Chinese Literature and Art, in 1950, 1952, 1953, and 1954. In its inaugural issue Epoch Poetry Quarterly advocated the “new model of national poetry” and it devoted the fourth issue (October 1955) to “combat poetry.” One of the editors, Ya Xian, received a second prize for long poems from the committee in 1956; he also won in a competition sponsored by the Department of Defense in July 1957. Other poets who were successful include Zheng Chouyu and Ye Shan (later known as Yang Mu).

But by the mid-1950s, modern poetry had made such headway that the Chinese Literature and Art Association and the Chinese Youth Writing Association, both official organs, joined private poetry societies in sponsoring poetry competitions. In 1955 Qin Zihao was one of the referees for a poetry competition sponsored by the Chinese Literature and Art Association. Among those who received the prizes (of NT$100 each) were Bai Qiu (1937–), Chui Heiming (1929–), Lin Ling (1938–), Sun Jiajun (1927–), Xu Kuang, and Peng Jie (1919–). Some of these young poets went on to enjoy long careers.

It is fair to say that the strategies modern poets used were highly successful. By redefining the nature of poetry and the image of the poet, modern poetry clearly distinguished itself from classical poetry. By participating in the official discourse of anticommunism, it was able to appropriate some of the cultural capital offered by the establishment and channel it into privately run poetry journals to develop the burgeoning field of modern poetry. Thus, despite the dominance of the official discourse, modern poetry was able to carve out a space for poets to pursue their art as individuals, relatively free from political intervention. This new space is best expressed as first, an ontologization of poetry (as a pure, spiritual pursuit); second, a self-awareness of the poet’s inferior status and resulting compassion for the disadvantaged in society; and, finally, a radical individualism vis-à-vis the world represented by the establishment and popular culture. The introduction of this new conception of poetry changed the existing literary field and in turn generated new symbolic and cultural capital, which further solidified its position. By the mid-1960s, a mature modern poetry scene was firmly in place. Although classical poetry remained aloof, it no longer posed a major threat in terms of cultural resources.

By 1965, a number of active poets, such as Fang Si, Lin Ling, Ye Weilian (1937–), and Ye Shan, had left Taiwan to study abroad. Ya Xian had stopped writing poetry completely and begun what would be a long and illustrious career as an editor and journalist. In February 1964, Modern Poetry Quarterly folded after forty-five issues published over more than a decade. The founder and spiritual leader of the Blue Star Poetry Society, Qin Zihao, died of cancer in 1963. Except for an annual collection in 1964, the Blue Star Poetry Page (founded in 1959) ceased publication in June 1965 after seventy-three issues; it was not till 1971 that the next “annual” collection appeared. From 1961 to 1963 the Epoch Poetry Journal only published one issue per year. Although Grape Orchard Poetry Society (Putaoyuan shishe) was formed in 1962, it did not play a significant role on the poetry scene mainly due to the quality of the work published in its journal. In short, 1964–65 seems to mark a low point in modern poetry in Taiwan.

On March 8, 1964, five poets—Zhan Bing (1921–), Lin Hengtai, Huan Fu, Jin Lian, and Gu Bei (1938–)—gathered at Zhan Bing’s home in Zhuolan to discuss starting a poetry society. They were inspired by the founding of Taiwanese Literature and Art (Taiwan wenyi), made possible through the persistent and skillful negotiation of Wu Zhuoliu, but at the same time they were frustrated that poetry would receive little attention in that new journal. So they decided to start a poetry journal of their own. Lin came up with the name that received unanimous support. They would call the new poetry society and journal “Li” (“Bamboo Hat”) (Chen Qianwu 1989:382). “Crown” was the name of a popular literary monthly founded in February 1954; the contrast between the aristocratic associations of the crown and the rural connotations of the bamboo hat is obvious. With eight more poets joining the group, a bimonthly journal was launched in mid-June 1964; it has continued publication, almost always on time, ever since.

In its early days, from 1964 through the 1970s, Bamboo Hat Poetry Journal quite consciously carried on the modern poetry movement of the preceding decade. The letter of invitation undersigned by the founding members states:

Although the poetry scene is somewhat lively, many poetry journals have not reached a satisfactory level. First, the selection of creative work is affected by personal connections; the sacred criterion of selection based on the work, not on the author, is yet to be established. Second, flattery and name-calling have taken the place of proper criticism and hampered progress on the poetry scene. In view of these weaknesses, we have decided to come forward resolutely to organize a serious, high-quality poetry journal in order to address the corruption on the poetry scene.

(Zhao 1989:393)

As indicated by the essays and poems published therein, Bamboo Hat saw itself as a successor of Ji Xian and the Modernist School. The inaugural issue stated that postwar modern poetry had gone beyond the May Fourth tradition and rightly reflected the spirit of the time. In the second issue, Bai Qiu wrote an overview of the Taiwanese poetry scene, which begins: “The ‘seed of fire’ was brought over by Ji Xian. He was then joined by Zhong Dingwen and Qin Zihao. This is how the furnace was lit up” (1964:10). Priding themselves on being solitary rebels and members of the avant garde, many modern poets were less enthusiastic about Qin Zihao and the Blue Star Poetry Society’s more conservative approach to poetry and were highly critical of Yu Guangzhong, whose traditionally flavored Associations of the Lotus (Lian de lianxiang) was published in 1964. Yu was regarded as retrograde for writing poetry in regular form that was reminiscent of mainland poetry of the 1920s and 1930s. (After 1964, however, Yu underwent a dramatic transformation into a “modernist.”) Bamboo Hat emphasized pure poetry (i.e., poetry as an art devoted to experiments in language), criticized sentimental poetry (as opposed to “intellect,” the foundation of modern poetry), and dissociated itself from popular culture (e.g., Chinese musicals, popular songs, American rock-and-roll). All of these were consistent with the modernist aesthetics of the 1950s and ’60s.

No doubt, this resonance was partly due to personal ties between Bamboo Hat and Modern Poetry Quarterly. Lin Hengtai was closely associated with Modern Poetry Quarterly from its beginning. Bai Qiu began his career in the same journal. Huang Hesheng (1938–) was a former student of Ji Xian at Chenggong High School and contributed frequently to Modern Poetry Quarterly. Other contributors included Wu Yingtao and Jin Lian, who were now members of Bamboo Hat. Lin Zongyuan even served as the president of Modern Poetry Quarterly in 1959 before he joined the Bamboo Hat Poetry Society.

In terms of creativity, Lin Hengtai published some of his best work in Bamboo Hat, including reprinting the pair of poems titled “Scenery” (issue 4). These poems inspired an imitation by Rui Cun (pen name of Wu Yingtao) under the same title in the following issue. Others such as Lin Zongyuan, Jin Lian, and Bai Qiu also published bold experimental poems. Finally, in the area of translation, the manifestos of American imagism, French surrealism, Italian futurism, and German Neue Sachlichkeit, among others, were published in Bamboo Hat, although the journal did not necessarily endorse those positions.

Bamboo Hat made several important contributions to modern poetry in Taiwan. First, it provided extensive introductions to Japanese as well as Western poetry and poetics. Translation of foreign work was a salient feature of the journal, as indicated by the call for contributions, which lists the following categories:

1. Poetry of originality

2. Translation and introduction of modern poetry of foreign countries

3. Translation and introduction of the manifestos and basic theories of all poetic schools of foreign countries

4. Insightful poetic theory

5. Profound, fair-minded, sincere reviews of books of poetry

6. Correspondence with foreign poetry circles

7. Study and introduction of major foreign poets

Of the seven categories, four had to do with the introduction of non-Chinese poetry. The cosmopolitan breadth of the journal not only resonates with Modern Poetry Quarterly and others in the 1950s but also harks back to the very beginning of Taiwanese poetry in the 1920s and 1930s. Understandably, the facility in Japanese of many Bamboo Hat members allowed them to translate a wide range of Japanese writings, or writings in other languages via Japanese. Further, they were able to interact with contemporary Japanese poets directly. Their translations and personal exchanges broadened the scope of the poetry scene and enriched modern poetry in Taiwan.

Second, unlike the other poetry journals, Bamboo Hat also focused on literary history and criticism. Despite Ji Xian’s lament in the early 1950s that there was no literary criticism in Taiwan, the situation did not seem to have improved much by the mid-1960s. Bamboo Hat repeatedly criticized the virtual absence of literary criticism; critics and scholars either blindly praised or blindly denigrated a work based on its superficial elements or place of origin. To combat such “corruption” of the poetry scene, Bamboo Hat devoted much space to practical criticism. Regularly featured columns provided literary history (“Shadow under the Bamboo Hat”) and “group critique,” where specific poems were selected for comments by a group, sometimes even several groups, of poets.

Finally, in contrast to the other poetry societies active in the postwar period, Bamboo Hat consisted (and still consists) almost exclusively of native Taiwanese poets. As indicated by the “group critique,” it had a well-organized network all over the island. Although other poetry journals never excluded anyone based on geographic location, in both number and connectedness Bamboo Hat clearly stood out. With a shared linguistic and cultural background, the poets had a perspective on the early history of modern Taiwanese poetry that was not available under the Nationalist regime. In 1967 Lin Hengtai coined the by now classic term, “translingual generation,” to describe those Taiwanese poets who wrote poetry in Japanese before they switched to Chinese. Equally important, Huan Fu traced the origins of Taiwanese poetry to both Japanese and May Fourth influences and established the notion of the “twin balls of roots” in 1980. The fact that none of the members was a mainland émigré was not made an issue until the 1980s (and then it became a highly politicized issue). In its original context, Huan Fu did not see the “twin balls of roots” as separate or conflicting but emphasized their “fusion” (ronghe). As Bai Qiu said in a seminar organized by the journal in 1982, “I think at the beginning Bamboo Hat did not try to raise nativist consciousness. [Members] wrote poetry based on their existential circumstances” (Bai Qiu 1989:260).

One of the topics that received much discussion in Bamboo Hat was the difficulty of reading modern poetry. This had been the main cause of much criticism, especially from outside poetry circles, throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Lin Hengtai rightly attributed the situation to the lack of qualified literary criticism and the common misunderstanding of the “methodology” and “critical nature” of modern poetry (Bamboo Hat no. 4). Although poets such as Wu Yingtao expressed concern that the obscure language of modern poetry seriously limited its readership and even caused its isolation from general readers, most poets in Bamboo Hat defended poetry as an experiment with language, no matter how radical. Bai Qiu, for instance, quoted Valéry as saying that “A poem would rather be read a thousand times by someone who understands it than be read by a thousand readers who don’t” (Bamboo Hat no. 37).

But obscurity eventually led to the biggest debate on poetry in postwar Taiwan, triggered by a series of essays written in 1972 by John Kwan Terry (Guan Jieming, 1939–), a professor of Chinese descent who taught in the English Department at Singapore National University. Terry’s criticism of modern poetry in Taiwan for having lost its Chinese identity in blindly imitating the West touched off an explosion of responses, the majority in agreement. Most notable are a special issue of the Dragon Race Poetry Journal (Longzu shikan) and a series of essays by Tang Wenbiao (1936–85), a poet and Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Illinois-Urbana, in 1973. Although there are significant differences among the various views expressed, these essays reintroduced the binary oppositions that have been a constant undercurrent throughout the history of modern Chinese poetry: tradition and modernity, China and the West, nativism and cosmopolitanism. In his preface to the special issue of Dragon Race, the editor, Gao Shangqin (pen name of Gao Xinjiang, 1944–), summarized the debate this way: “To give an overview of the special issue on poetry criticism, we note in it a general tendency that readers and authors both demand an identity of modern poetry. In terms of time, they expect it to be connected properly with tradition; in terms of space, they expect it to correspond truthfully to reality” (Gao 1978:166).

The target of the debate is “modernist” poetry, which was identified with Ji Xian’s Modernist School and reached an extreme with the Epoch Poetry Society, which had advocated surrealism from the late 1950s on. According to critics, such poetry lacked both Chineseness and social consciousness. Although Terry admitted, “The fate of Chinese literature is inextricably related to Western literature” (1978:139), he nevertheless rejected postwar modern poetry as a product of “cultural colonialism” (142) by the United States and Japan. Tang derided modernist writers as “cultural compradors” (1978:56). Accusing modern poetry of being formalistic, decadent, escapist, and nihilistic, they advocated realism over modernism and a return to the Chinese tradition over slavish imitation of the West. The debate in Taiwan preceded the comparable controversy over Misty Poetry in post-Mao China by nearly a decade; in both cases the obscurity of language that characterized “modernist” poetry was seen as a sign of decadent individualism, attributed to corruption by Western ideas.

It is beyond the scope of this essay to go into the critics’ partial understanding or misunderstanding of both Western and Taiwanese modernism (M. Yeh 1998), but some glaring fallacies in their argument are worth pointing out. First of all, it is perfectly valid to criticize a poem for its lack of artistic merit. Proper criteria for judging poetry are, in fact, what modern poets, from Modern Poetry Quarterly to Bamboo Hat, tried to establish from the 1950s onward. However, to focus on some of the worst poems (whether by different poets or in one poet’s oeuvre) in support of an argument gives an unbalanced view and does not do justice to modern poetry as a whole. Besides, while it is true that of all the poems written during this period, only a tiny percentage is outstanding, this can be said of poetry in any period, place, or style. Modernism claims no exclusive right to bad poems!

Further, although it is valid for critics to wish to broaden the base of readership for modern poetry, they only see the surface of the problem (i.e., most readers have problems understanding modern poetry) but not its root, which has to do with the paradigm shift resulting from the emergence of modern poetry in the 1910s and the concomitant need to educate the reading public.

A third fallacy of the criticism of modern poetry is that it equates subject matter with poetic style. To say that realism is better suited for expressing concerns of contemporary society than modernism represents a gross misunderstanding of the necessarily mediated nature of poetry. The social critique that underlies some of the best work from the 1950s and 1960s is completely ignored.

Finally, it is natural and healthy to revitalize the poetry scene periodically. When a movement peaks, it inevitably goes downhill. By the end of the 1960s, modern poetry had shown signs of lack of creativity and sincerity. The introduction of new ideas and new directions in the debate provided a much-needed impetus for the next phase of development. However, many critics fell into cultural purism or essentialism when they predicated their arguments on a rigid dichotomy of China versus the West, the native versus the foreign. In doing so, they denied the fact that “China” always already included and was inseparable from “the West.” Ironically, when Terry called modern poetry “neither a donkey nor a horse” and when Tang disparagingly referred to it as a “hodgepodge” of the East and the West, they overlooked what is probably the most important source and strength of Taiwan’s identity. The “real China” that they identified with inevitably repressed the transcultural, hybrid subjectivity of Taiwan.

The dual focus of the debate—Chinese tradition and contemporary social reality—reveals an acute identity crisis that is more national than literary. In the early 1970s, Taiwan suffered a series of setbacks in the international arena. In 1970–71, the dispute between China and Japan concerning the territorial rights over Diaoyutai (or Senkaku) Islets, a cluster of fishing islands in the East China Sea, led to widespread demonstrations against Japanese imperialism both in Taiwan and abroad. In the United States, the Protecting Diaoyutai Movement, abbreviated as “Bao Diao,” owed much of its momentum and organization to graduate students who had come from Taiwan. Also in 1971, Taiwan, the seat of the Republic of China, withdrew from the United Nations under mounting pressure from the international community in support of the People’s Republic of China as the legitimate representative of China on the Security Council. This was followed a few months later by Richard Nixon’s historic visit to the PRC and signing of the Shanghai Communiqué in February 1972, which paved the way for the resumption of diplomatic relations between the two powers after more than two decades. In the same year, Taiwan also terminated diplomatic relations with Japan, with which it had had close ties since 1895. The quick succession of setbacks invalidated the Guomindang’s claim as the sole legitimate government of China, and the betrayal of former allies left people in Taiwan feeling isolated and bitter. The debate on modern poetry in the early 1970s can be seen as the eruption of the most recent identity crisis in Chinese history. The effort to raise nationalist consciousness in society through poetry served a political purpose more than a literary one.

But the tide could not be stemmed. The appeal to nationalism and social consciousness carried such self-evident moral authority and political urgency that the “modernist” poets under attack could hardly defend themselves; some changed their style decidedly while others simply remained silent. The rhetoric of nationalism and social realism is couched in two tropes derived from the world of plants and the human body. The former concentrates on the plant’s growth, blossoming, fruit bearing, and, most important, rootedness. A literature that has lost its distinct national identity is compared to a plant that is uprooted and is bound to wither and die. Hence, the trope of plants evokes the idea of root-seeking and thus is an implicit critique of the metaphor that Ji Xian used in 1956 in his controversial manifesto of the Modernist School: “We believe that New Poetry is the result of horizontal transplantation, not vertical inheritance” (Modern Poetry Quarterly no. 13).

It is ironic that Ji Xian’s metaphor of transplantation also denotes an organic process: once transplanted, the seedling adapts to the new environment, takes root, and grows and flourishes. However, the organic nature of literary and cultural transplantation was peremptorily ignored or denied by critics who insisted on dichotomizing modernism and Chineseness. Instead of seeing Western (or other) influences as an “organic” part of modern Chinese poetry, they only emphasized unrootedness. Modern poetry in postwar Taiwan was seen as having “lost the earth where its roots are planted” (Gao 1978:167), and it was but a short step from the word “transplantation” (yizhi in Chinese) to “colonization” (zhimin). A few years later, Lin Hengtai would employ a related metaphor to defend modernist poetry. Using the hybridization of fruit and vegetables as an analogy, he said: “To refuse influence is to refuse growth” (Bamboo Hat no. 100 [Dec. 1980]). Pointing out the fallacy of insisting on irreconcilable differences between modernism and nativism, Lin advised a more tolerant and open-minded approach to poetry.

The root-seeking trend was adumbrated by the founding of the Dragon Race Poetry Club in 1971. The name invokes the myth that Chinese people descended from the dragon, an ancient symbol of imperial strength and male power (the dragon being the archetype of Yang energy in the cosmology based on the Book of Changes). The famous manifesto of the Dragon Race Poetry Club, written by Chen Fangming (1947–) and Shi Shanji (1945–), reads: “We strike our own gong, beat our own drum, and dance with our own dragon” (Chen Fangming 1983:200). The images refer to a national cultural activity: the traditional dragon dance in celebration of the lunar New Year. Some of the other poetry clubs that emerged in the wake of the debate came up with names that were equally explicit about their identification with the traditional and the local, such as Grass Root (Caogen), Great Earth (Dadi), and Green Earth (Ludi).

The other trope widely used in the debate is the human body. Parallel to the contrast between rootedness and rootlessness is the dichotomy between health and sickness, life and death. Just as a plant cannot survive long when severed from its roots, so a man cannot be healthy and strong when he is separated from his cultural roots and social reality. Words often used to describe modern poetry include “pathological” (bingtai), “deformed” (jixing), “anemic” (pinxie), “handicapped” (canfei), and “dead” (siwang). Weakness and illness are further linked to human sexuality, including impotence and masturbation, which appeared in the writings of such critics as Chen Yingzhen (1937–), Yu Tiancong (1935–), and Tang Wenbiao.

Finally, sexuality relates to gender, and here we see the intersection of nationalism and sexism, of cultural politics and gender politics. Critics often attribute such qualities as strength, independence, and dignity to the male, while their opposites—weakness, dependence, and submissiveness—are associated with the female. The reification of gender is pervasive in the debate. Critics identify modern poetry either with male impotency and castration or with the female. To the extent that the male stands for subjectivity, the female has none. To the extent that those critics desired a strong cultural identity for Taiwan, they unconsciously subscribed to, and thus reinforced, traditional gender stereotypes.

Written in October 1975, Su Shaolian’s “Mixed Blood” (“Hunxieer”) represents a thoughtful reflection on the issue of identity, which underscored the debate three years earlier (page 312). Like his surrealist predecessor Shang Qin, Su creates a flowing narrative that presents a situation of everyday life in a matter-of-fact tone: one morning the poet goes to the local police station to look at the household registry and spots his own name in it. Also like Shang Qin, Su punctures the smooth textual fabric with tantalizing details which, by creating a disjuncture in meaning, achieve the effect of defamiliarization and mystery. Through these devices, the poet suggests that there is a deeper reality lying just beyond the threshold of what we normally accept.

In the poem, the poet has two names: “my name” and “another name”; the latter is “Su Shaolian,” but “my name” is never revealed. Further, the names that huddle in the registry are described as “zu,” meaning “race” or “ethnicity.” Not only are the names like a people, but they are of “unknown skin color.” Contrary to conventions, we are told that “Su Shaolian” is not the poet’s real name, that it is only a substanceless being that attaches itself to “my name, my nationality, my heritage, my linage.” The poem suggests that names are arbitrary labels, not reliable indicators of personal identity. Further, although the poet acknowledges the tie, established through time, between a man’s name and his familial, cultural, and national origin, what is kept unrevealed throughout the poem is his “real name,” which cannot be identified by any of these common indexes. The “self” remains more elusive and intangible, thus perhaps truer and freer, than can be defined by any conventional markers (even the most basic marker, skin color, is rejected by the poet). Written in the mid-1970s, “Mixed Blood” inadvertently foresaw the growing importance and contentiousness of the issue of identity in the following decades.

With its call for return to cultural roots and local reality, the debate on modern poetry in the early 1970s was a precursor of the large-scale Native Literature Movement from 1977 to 1979, which advocated native consciousness in literary representations (Wang 1980). The same axes of tension ran through the movement, although poetry played a negligible role. As the political opposition movement grew in Taiwan, the demand for a Taiwanese identity in contradistinction to a Chinese identity began to be expressed openly, culminating in demonstrations known as the Formosa Incident (Meilidao shijian) in Gaoxiong at the end of 1979. Whereas in the early 1970s native consciousness meant unequivocally Chinese consciousness, a split into the “China complex” and the “Taiwan complex” took place as the decade drew to a close. The double foci of the earlier debate on modern poetry—Chineseness and contemporary social reality—were gradually replaced by a single focus on Taiwanese reality in the 1980s. A poetry oriented toward rediscovering and re-presenting the history of Taiwan was clearly on the ascent.

Nativist poetics found a powerful expression in “political poetry.” According to Li Qin’an, the term was coined in 1983, when a few literary journals, such as Taiwan Literature and Art and the poetry journal A Gathering in the Sunshine (Yangguang xiaoji), started new sections called “political poetry” (Wu 1984:77). Also in 1983, the poetry anthology published by the nativist Avant-Garde Press included a group of poems dealing with political topics that had thitherto been taboo; they ranged from the February 28 Incident of 1947 to the Formosa Incident of December 1979 and the politically motivated murders of the Lin family in 1980. Although veiled expressions of protest could be found before the 1980s (e.g., Wu Sheng’s “Animal Spirit Tablet,” page 288), taking advantage of the liberalizing trend under President Chiang Ching-kuo, many poets tried to rediscover Taiwan’s history that had been either suppressed or distorted by the Nationalist regime. Going beyond one-dimensional, sentimental social grievance, some of the political poetry in the 1980s succeeded in supporting idealism with art. Liu Kexiang’s (1957–) “Posthumous Sons” (“Yifuzi”), written in 1983, is a fine example:

1890 …

1915, posthumous son, Remember-China Chen,

Who liked to speak in Chinese, died in the fighting at Tapani

1951, posthumous son, Establish-Taiwan Chen,

Who liked to speak in Taiwanese, took his own life on a small island

1980, posthumous son, Unity Chen,

Who liked to speak in English, succumbed to illness in a foreign land

2010, posthumous son …

(translated by Andrea Lingenfelter)

The poem provides a sweeping perspective on Taiwanese history. Language, like history, religion, or lifestyle, is a defining aspect of cultural identity. Through shared language, a community takes on a shared identity, or at least is in a better position to imagine one. In Liu’s poem, the linguistic transition, first from Chinese to Taiwanese, then from Taiwanese to English, suggests the complexity and elusiveness of Taiwan’s identity and its ongoing quest. The use of the posthumous son as the central metaphor points directly to Taiwan’s sufferings as a result of various political conflicts in the twentieth century. “Tapani” in line 3 refers to the largest uprising of Taiwanese people during the Japanese occupation period. Led by Yu Qingfang and known as the Xilai Convent Incident, it involved such places as Tapani, Daqiuyuan, and Hejuezai, all near the city of Tainan, in July–August 1915. The uprising was brutally suppressed by the Japanese ruler, who executed not only Yu and his followers but also many residents of Tapani. According to the official Chinese account, “more than 10,000 local Taiwanese lost their lives” (The Republic of China Yearbook of 1999 1999:72).

That one of the martyrs in the anticolonial uprising bears the name “Nianzhong” (“Remember-China”) conjures up a family history of loyalty to China and resistance against Japan. A posthumous son, Nianzhong followed in his father’s footsteps, identified with China as his motherland (as suggested by the fact that he loved to speak Chinese rather than the colonizer’s language), and took part in the local uprising. Also like his father, he died for a patriotic cause. The irony, as the poem continues, is that if the first posthumous son died for China, shortly after 1945 China changed from the past object of loyalty to the present target of resistance. In the second stanza, the year 1951 is probably associated with two major historical events: the February 28 Incident of 1947 and the White Terror under the GMD beginning in the 1950s. In the repressive atmosphere of postwar Taiwan, as I have mentioned, Hokkien (or Taiwanese) was forbidden in public and stigmatized. Those who voiced criticisms of the regime and articulated a native Taiwanese consciousness suffered political persecution, such as being sent to the infamous Green Island (Lüdao), an offshore islet for imprisoning political dissidents. Could it be that the posthumous son Litai (“Establish-Taiwan”) was a political prisoner and committed suicide because he could not endure the bleak conditions there?

If the above tragedies suggest Taiwan’s thwarted quest for cultural identity, the poem takes a sharp turn in the fourth stanza. By 1980 opposition to the Nationalist government could no longer be successfully contained and the popular demand for democratization no longer dismissed. Soon after Chiang Kaishek passed away in 1975, opposition was organized under the name Dangwai, meaning “outside the [Nationalist] Party,” and in 1978 the League of Dangwai Election Campaigns was launched, posing a serious challenge to the ruling party at local elections. Although the 1979 Formosa Incident was suppressed and led to the arrests and indictments of many leading dissidents, the trials were made public in the media and the opposition views articulated there won widespread sympathy. A positive outcome of the incident was that the government was pressured into holding free elections at the national level at the end of 1980, which further consolidated the opposition and heightened nativist consciousness. Pluralization and democratization, once started, could not be reversed.

In light of the historical circumstances, the fourth stanza strikes a sarcastic note, implicitly criticizing those who have moved permanently to foreign countries. The motivation behind immigration is intimated by the name Heyi, which means “Unity.” It alludes to the heated contention between those for Taiwan’s eventual unification with China and those for Taiwan’s independence. The fact that the posthumous son lives in an English-speaking country, most likely the United States or Canada, suggests that he belongs to the former camp. Further, that he likes to speak English and lives for the rest of his life away from Taiwan makes a wry comment on the loss of native identity, whether Chinese or Taiwanese.

It is important to note that the poem is written in a pseudo-historiographical style. As in an official chronicle, the language is formal, terse, and unembellished. When we look more closely, however, the poem reveals meticulous art. Parallelism is the major device used, as seen in the parallel dates (1915/1951, 1890/1980), places (China/Taiwan, Taiwan/U.S.), languages (Chinese/Japanese, Chinese/Taiwanese, Chinese/English), and names. Perfect parallelism underscores contrasts as well as similarities among the various phases of Taiwanese history. The open ending intimates the uncertainty of the future, as Taiwan continues its quest for cultural identity.

The exposés and contemplations of repressed history in the early 1980s signaled the emergence of what Jiao Tong calls an “oppositional poetics” (fandui shixue) (Ye Zhenfu 1996:470). Political poetry represented an attempt to give voice to the disenfranchised and the oppressed, and it inspired a wide range of perspectives from the margins of the society that eventually went beyond politics in a narrow sense. These new voices addressed such topics as the plight of the aborigines, the devastation of the environment, the degraded living conditions of GMD veterans, child prostitution, and gender inequality. The tendency continued into the 1990s, encompassing an ever-broadening scope of concerns (e.g., discrimination against homosexuals). The change of the official name for the aborigines from “mountain people” (shandiren) to “indigenous residents” (yuanzhumin) in 1984 is an apt emblem of this collective consciousness. In his own way Mona Neng (1956–) recalls what has been forgotten and retrieves what was lost:

From “raw barbarians” to “mountain compatriots”

Our name

Was gradually forgotten in a corner of the History of Taiwan

To stop wandering on our own land

We must first bring back our name, our dignity.

(translated by Michelle Yeh)

A decade of literary movements and political upheavals left indelible marks on modern poetry in the 1970s and ’80s, and some of the impact extended into the 1990s. First, it set off a trend of neoclassical revival. Beginning with Yang Mu, Yu Guangzhong, and Luo Fu and continuing with Yang Ze (1954–), Luo Zhicheng (1955–), and Wen Ruian (1954–), poets much more consciously looked to the classical tradition for subject matter, allusions, idiom, imagery, and even form (e.g., modern versions of the “quatrain”). But if neoclassicism took place mostly at the thematic or stylistic level, a more profound impact was evident in the changing conception of poetry. Concern for contemporary society was for a long time viewed as the proper domain of poetry, and realism as the appropriate vehicle for expressing such concern. As the identity of the island vis-à-vis China was pushed more and more to the center of Taiwan’s political and cultural agenda, poetry was encouraged, perhaps even expected, to express “the Taiwan spirit.” Much work appeared in the 1980s and 1990s that either empathized with the Taiwanese people (see Liu Kexiang’s “Young Revolutionaries” [“Geming Qingnian”] and “Showa Grass” [“Zhaohe cao”]) or critiqued the Guomindang (see Huan Fu’s “Find an Honorific for Mosquitoes” [“Gei wenzi qu ge rongyu de mingzi ba”] and “Excuse My Rudeness” [“Shu wo maomei”]). Poetry written in Hokkien also began to thrive.

The poetry scene has changed dramatically since the 1950s. Whereas in that decade modern poets were engaged in defending New Poetry against classical verse and anticommunist discourse, neither poses a threat anymore. Whereas in the 1950s poets established the independence of poetry as a serious art form clearly dissociated from popular culture, since the 1980s they have sought to reintegrate poetry into society, either as social conscience as extolled by the nativist movement, or in alignment with the ever-growing consumer market. Neither path has taken modern poetry very far, however. Narrowly nativist or political poetry is often little more than angry venting or self-righteous declarations. Such direct comments on Taiwan’s social or political issues have neither made poetry more relevant to the masses than before nor been effective in bringing about changes in society.

In contrast to the separation of poetry from song emphasized in the 1950s and ’60s, beginning in the mid-1970s and throughout the 1980s there was a movement to combine modern poetry with music, to turn modern poems into melodious songs. Although a fair number of poems have made a successful crossover, the practice has not helped expand the readership for modern poetry in general. After all, songs, especially popular songs, follow certain formulas to which most poetry cannot be made to conform. Without a firm grasp of the generic differences between modern poems and popular songs, poets rarely make good lyricists. A few exceptions are Xia Yu (1956–), Lu Hanxiu (1958–), and Chen Kehua (1961–). Xia Yu’s case illustrates the point well. Although she is a highly successful lyricist of popular songs in Taiwan, so far she has not made any of her own poems into songs.

Other strategies for popularizing poetry since the 1970s are associated with the media-dominated Information Age. As early as 1975, the Grass Roots Poetry Society, founded by Luo Qing (1948–), Zhang Xianghua (1939–), and others, announced one of its four principles as follows: “We realize that popularization and professionalization of poetry are two sides of the same coin. The distinction depends on subject matter and artistic devices. We hope to see a balanced expression of both without leaning toward one or the other” (Xiang Yang 1984:59). Multimedia presentations of poetry, whose major advocates include Luo Qing and Du Shisan (1950–), incorporate a broad spectrum of audio-visual forms, such as recordings, dance, mimes, drama, photography, and video. Despite various attempts to make modern poetry accessible or available to the public, it still appeals only to a select audience. Granted, a few poets have done well in the market, most notably Xi Murong (1943–) in the 1980s (later in mainland China as well). The reason, I submit, is not because her poetry inherits “realism’s respect for the mundane world and its reflection of the hearts of the masses” (Lin Qiyang 1999:86), but rather because of its familiar, traditionally flavored language, romantic subject matter, and comfortable sentimentality. Its commercial success proves ever more convincingly that there is a gaping gulf between modern poetry and popular culture.

Finally, from an economic point of view, poets in the 1950s struggling to keep journals alive by pawning personal possessions has become a legend in the affluent society of Taiwan in the 1980s and 1990s. A new generation of poets has grown up to be professors (Luo Qing, Jian Zhengzhen [1950– ], Bai Ling, Du Ye), doctors (Chen Kehua, Zhuang Yu’an [1959– ]), or editors and publishers (Chen Yizhi [1953– ], Yang Ze, Xiang Yang, Luo Zhicheng, Jiao Tong, Chu Anmin [1957– ], Liu Kexiang, Xu Huizhi [1966– ]).

As Taiwan became more urbanized—with 70 percent of the population living in urban areas, Taipei and Gaoxiong being the most populated cities—“homeland” has more and more come to mean the urban jungle, with all the ailments of late twentieth-century civilization: overpopulation, traffic congestion, air pollution and noise pollution, destruction of the ecosystem, threats of nuclear catastrophes, and so on. Many poets express their concern for the severed tie between humans and nature. Bai Ling’s “Spring’s Brief Visit to Taipei” (“Chuntian lai Taibei xiaozhu”) sees the disconnectedness as the result of rapid urbanization. Shang Qin’s “Rooster” (“Ji”) juxtaposes fast-food chickens and crowing roosters. Human ingenuity has invented numerous artificial means to replace nature that far exceed nature in efficiency, such as mass-produced meats and fluorescent lights. But the artificial way of life breaks the natural cycle of day and night, life and death, and in the end brings harm to the human imagination:

In Chinese, the word for “imagination” (xiangxiang) is closely related to the word “elephant” (xiang). In Hong Hong’s (1964–) “City Zoo” (“Chengshi dongwuyuan”), a giant elephant passes through the city, yet no one sees it as it

gently touches

every single thing

(unbeknownst to us),

departs,

but leaves

its imprint on the walls;

disappears,

and we forget it.

Later, we find its carcass

atop the weather station

and realize it’s been standing there all along,

waiting for its kind.

(translated by Mike O’Connor)

The elephant’s effort to get the city folk to notice its existence fails. The death of the elephant symbolizes the death of the imagination, the spontaneous passion of human beings for beauty and life expressed through creativity. The theme of the animal fables that comprise the sequence is poignantly summed up in these lines: “a small wonder in life / disappears without trace.”

Small wonders are indeed hard to come by in an age in which the media turn individuals into consumers who all have the same tastes and chase after the same fads. This is the object of satire in Chen Kehua’s “On TV After Dinner” (“Zai wancan hou de dianshi shang,” pages 445–447). Modern life has taken on a most elaborate, impressive form but has little individuality and substance. The motif of the “hollow man” finds poignant expressions in Lin Yu’s (1956–) “Name Cards” (“Mingpian,” page 422) and Chen Kehua’s “Bathroom” (“Yushi,” page 445). In “Leaving Work” (“Xiaban”), Sun Weimin (1959–) turns the routine of a white-collar urban commuter into a powerful analogy of the isolation and indifference of modern men and women:

If for Ling Yu (1952–) we are acrobats doing a balancing act between meaning and the void, for Xu Huizhi we are all fallen angels, too caught up in our desires to see the way to salvation. Erotic desire, in particular, epitomizes all desire; it is the source of happiness and sorrow, beauty and ugliness. The fact that religion, especially Buddhism, figures so prominently in the poetry of the 1990s reflects the flourishing of Buddhism and other religions in Taiwan in the past two decades and, more important, attests to the collective human quest for life’s meaning at the turn of the millennium. Whether in the Buddha or Aung San Suu Kyi, Xu sees selfless idealism as perhaps the only path to emancipation and salvation.

Despite the significant transformation of the poetry scene and the broadening of the scope of poetry since the 1970s, there is an unbroken tradition in Taiwan in the poets’ common concern for humanity and nature, desire for expression of individual creativity, and, above all, continuing explorations of the medium of poetry—language—whether symbolist, modernist, surrealist, realist, or postmodernist. It is through the interminable process of creation, reaction, counterreaction, interaction, and transformation from the 1920s to the present that modern Chinese poetry in Taiwan has emerged as a unique presence in world literature. To deny that history is to deny the subjectivity of this poetry. Thus, contrary to the view that Taiwan’s modern poetry did not have a subjectivity until the nativist movement in the 1970s and ’80s, I see a vital tradition from the 1920s to the present, made stronger by its ever-renewed ability to indigenize the alien and nativize the foreign.

Self-identity is relational by definition; the need to define oneself arises when one becomes aware of an Other. The resumption of contact between Taiwan and China since 1986 has given many Taiwanese an opportunity to visit the mainland, some for the first time, others in an emotional return after nearly four decades. Regardless of their background or reason for visiting, they get to see “China” for themselves. Invariably, such contact brings a heightened awareness of the irreducible differences that separate Taiwan from mainland China linguistically, socially, politically, and culturally. Chen Yizhi’s “Broken-down Family Tree” (“Polan de jiapu”), written in 1988, presents an occasion for such comparison:

beard pulled into loose strands, head wrapped in a scarf the ancient way

feet splash-splattered with mud—he’s my cousin

in thirty years he’s never left the remote mountainside he calls home

on this occasion, he accompanies me across the river to the county township

muttering to himself as he taps the stem of his pipe:

there’s no life in this place anymore

when the steamboat turns

he coughs violently

there’s no life in this place

the waist-thick banyan trees have been cut down

the pitch-black mountain forest is gone

the stone-paved road to the outside world has been dug up

yes, and after forty years there’s still no electricity

the old people of the village are left with more and more forgetting

having no memories to hold on to

in the winter of ’49, his father was tossed into a nameless gully

in ’53, his brother died east of the Yalu River

all three children born over the years

are illiterate

in the Famine Years, they gnawed on the bark of loquat trees, nibbled on tupa vine

and when wolfing hunger howled in their bellies they filled them with lumps of white earth

and so managed to survive

inside the Sweet Potato Restaurant down by the river

I order him finless eel and a plate of stir-fried pork kidneys

he shows me our broken-down family tree

and points to a line:

“From time immemorial, all things have been one with Heaven ….”

(translated by Simon Patton)

The syntax of the first two lines is uncommon in modern Chinese. The subject of the sentence is not revealed until we have come to the end of three long descriptive phrases. In the Chinese original, the first-person narrator’s cousin is referred to as “that man.” Further, the first two lines use a language and images that are unfamiliar to Taiwan. Through these devices, the poem hints at the distance between the narrator and his long-separate cousin on the mainland. This psychological distancing continues in the account, in the next two stanzas, of the trials and tribulations of the family under the Communist regime, where he refers to other characters as belonging to the cousin but not to him (e.g., “his father” rather than “my uncle”). Although the narrator is sympathetic, he can only see the mainland from an outsider’s point of view. He and his cousin belong to a “broken family tree” that has branched out in two different directions that grow farther and farther apart. The “China” of 1949 is not the “China” of 1999, and the “China” that left the mainland and came to Taiwan half a century ago has become an integral part of “Taiwan” today.

Cultural differences have been a major theme of much poetry in Taiwan since the 1980s, as the issue of Taiwan’s identity has been at the forefront of political and cultural discussions. One immediately noticeable difference between Taiwan and China is language. While mainland China uses simplified Chinese characters, Taiwan has preserved the traditional written language. In terms of the spoken language, the Mandarin Chinese brought over by the Nationalist government in 1945 and the mix of various dialects on a small island over half a century have produced a language distinct from that on the mainland in idiom, formal and colloquial expressions, intonation, and, above all, pronunciation. The standard pronunciation on the mainland, based on Beijingese and referred to as “the common language” (Putonghua), requires much tongue curling, whereas in Taiwan, where southern dialects dominate, tongue curling is used much less and sometimes simply abandoned. The difference is somewhat comparable to that between “r” and “l” in American English. This significant linguistic difference is the subject of Chen Li’s 1995 poem “Movement of No Tongue-Curling” (“Bu juanshe yundong”).

The poem begins with three analogies: tongue curling is mentioned in the same breath with wearing a bow tie, putting on airs, and standing on ceremony. There are four tongue-curling sounds in Mandarin; trying to make them is likened to wearing jewelry that makes one uncomfortable. In other words, to curl the tongue is pretentious and unnatural. Further, in Chinese slang, “that word” (na hua er) is a euphemism for the phallus, but the poem equates it with tongue-curling sounds and says: “This word, that word / One can do without it” (Chen Li 1995:116). The poem gets more humorous as it introduces a tongue-twister in classical Chinese, which consists of forty-eight characters and whose meaning depends on a clear distinction between tongue-curling and non-tongue-curling near-homonyms. This is followed by a “Taiwanese” reading, which disregards this distinction and pronounces all the words without tongue curling. The poem concludes by defending the Taiwanese linguistic practice:

… A good

Tongue-twister is like a good epic

There can only be one

No constipation

No turgidity

No denying history

No rejecting non-tongue-curling

For example, I am a long-time lesident of Taiwan

For example, the Three People’s Plinciples is the way to unify China

(translated by Michelle Yeh)

When Taiwanese people come into contact with those who speak Putonghua, especially those in North China, their style of pronunciation gives away their identity and sometimes makes them objects of mockery. Chen recognizes the difference and even admits that there can only be one “good tongue-twister.” In other words, when you don’t curl your tongue, you ruin the classic tongue-twister. Yet he also rightly attributes the situation to historical factors. To expect Taiwanese people to speak the same way as those who speak Putonghua is to “deny history.” Besides, he finds it pretentious and even sickening when a Taiwanese tries to imitate what sounds to him like exaggerated tongue curling.

The subtle gender identities in the poem are also significant. Chen equates Taiwan with the female, who does not have “that word”—the phallus and tongue curling—and China with the boastful male. The political overtones are clear. Chen rejects the stronger China as the norm and believes that Taiwan, though weaker, does not need to conform or aspire to that norm. Hence, the poet wants to start a “movement” to not curl the tongue.

How does a small island assert cultural distinction from a continent? This theme runs throughout Chen’s 1995 book of poetry, The Edge of the Island (Daoyu bianyuan). The title itself suggests that the poet consciously assumes a marginal position as he reflects on the past, present, and future of Taiwan. As he says in the afterword: “Since 1988 when I resumed creative writing, there has been a clear trajectory of a quest for the history of the land under my feet” (Chen Li 1995:204). At a personal level, Chen is literally on the periphery; Hualian, a medium-sized city on the east coast where the poet was born and has lived most of his life, is peripheral vis-à-vis Taipei, the political, economic, and cultural center of the island. At a more general level, he is also contemplating the peripheral position of Taiwan vis-à-vis mainland China. Besides “The Movement of No Tongue-Curling,” a powerful example is “A Lesson in Ventriloquy” (“Fuyuke”).

The rich semantic variation of the original poem cannot possibly be reproduced in English. Only a partial representation of the visual and phonetic structure of the poem is given here:

UuUUUuUUUuUUuUUUuuU

UUUu UUUu UUUuUUUuuU

(I am gentle …)

UuuUUUuuUUUUUuUUu

UuUUUUuUUuUUuUUuU

(I am gentle …)

OOOooOOOOOOOOOooOO

OOoOoOOOOoOOoOoOOo

OoOOoOOoOOoOOOOOoO

oOOoOoOOoOOOOoOoOO

OooOOOOOooOOoOOO

(and kind …)

At first reading, the poem may seem no more than a language game, perhaps inspired and made possible by Chinese computer software (which allows one to punch in a romanization and get a long list of homonymous characters in varying tones). Lines 1–2 put together thirty-six different characters in “u” sound in the fourth tone, which are then mirror-imaged in lines 4–5. The long catalog of characters is broken up only by the inserted parenthesized line in a different typeface: “I am gentle ….” In the second stanza, there are forty-four characters in “o” sound in the fourth tone. Echoing the first stanza, the two columns of characters here (almost) form a mirror image of each other. The parenthesized line 12 completes the sentence, which begins in fragments in lines 3 and 6: “I am gentle … I am gentle … and kind ….”

What are we to make of this? First, we note the sharp contrast in typography. Lines 1–2, 4–5, and 7–11 each form a rectangular block, with a small corner of the third rectangle cut off by a single parenthesis in line 11. In terms of size, these rectangles take up much more space and look much larger and heavier than the parenthesized lines, which are less than a third of the rectangles. Second, the rectangles and the parenthesized lines have different typefaces. Also in terms of form, there is perfect symmetry between lines 1–2 and lines 4–5, but less than perfect symmetry between lines 7–8–9 and 9–10–11. Symmetry is conspicuously absent in the parenthesized lines; in fact the poet uses several devices to avoid formal symmetry in these fragments, including an odd rather than even number of lines and the repetition of “I am gentle …” twice in contrast to only one “and kind,” thus creating a 2–1 asymmetry in the complete sentence (lines 3, 6, 12). All the line numbers of the sentence are also multiples of three, another odd number. Finally, there are the asymmetrical punctuation marks and the odd position of the parenthesis at the end of line 11.

In addition to form, there is a most dramatic contrast in sound. Whereas “u” and “o” are both fourth tone, reading thirty-six u’s and forty-four o’s in a row creates a hard, monotonous, unnatural sound effect. (Can we imagine the poem at a poetry reading?) In contrast to the long strings of heavy sounds, the short sentence consisting of a few simple, mono-or bisyllabic words, with an undulating cadence (due to a fair distribution of all four tones), sounds much lighter, softer, more melodious and pleasing.

Further, in terms of syntax, the thirty-six u’s and forty-four o’s do not form a phrase or unified image, much less a meaningful sentence. In fact, most of these characters are obscure or archaic words hardly ever used in daily speech or even in modern writing. Grouped together in this particular typographical arrangement, they create an extreme effect of defamiliarization: a Chinese reader may recognize all the words but think they look strange on the page. In contrast, although the words in the parentheses are small in number, they form a complete sentence, with the subject “I,” the copula “am,” and the predicate “gentle and kind.” Despite its minimalist syntactic structure, this is a perfect sentence.

Finally, we note the semantic structure of the poem. The first word of both stanzas is the same character with two different pronunciations (“u” and “o”) and meanings (“u” means “to loathe or dislike” and “o” means “evil”). Both words have negative connotations. Again, the contrast between them and the words in parentheses—“gentle” and “kind”—is obvious.

Why is the poem called “A Lesson in Ventriloquy”? Taken literally, the poem illustrates the difficulty for someone who is a novice in the art of ventriloquy and can only utter a single, unintelligible sound at a time. As if stuttering, he means to say “I am gentle …”—“I” pronounced as “wo” in Chinese—but only manages to utter “wu.” If we understand the poem metaphorically, as the art of speaking without opening the mouth, ventriloquy connotes a discrepancy between appearance and reality, between outer form and inner substance, between “what you see” and “what you hear.” Discrepancy clearly exists between the “u” and “o” blocks and the parenthesized fragments in the poem. The blocks have an unpleasing, strange appearance, but the sentence reveals what lies in the heart, which is gentleness and kindness. If this interpretation is valid, then the poem reiterates the universal theme of an ugly person with a kind heart. More specifically, the poem echoes a hit song in Taiwan from the early 1990s, sung by Zhao Chuan and called “I Am Ugly But I Am Gentle” (“Wo hen chou keshi wo hen wenrou”). This may not be a coincidence; the song lyrics were written by a fellow Taiwanese poet, Xia Yu, whose work Chen Li is surely familiar with.

I argue, however, that the poem has yet another meaning. In ventriloquy, one manages to make a sound without opening the mouth. In other words, the contrast between the “u” and “o” blocks and the slim parenthesized sentence implies a lopsided relationship, with the former dominant and the latter being dominated. The poem is an imaginative embodiment of the nativist poetics that Chen has been developing in his recent work. The heavy, harsh, monotonous strings of “u” and “o” sounds, with their exact, hence rigid, symmetry and their dominant presence on the page, are associated with mainland China, whose hegemony seems so overpowering but also so alien to a much smaller, weaker Taiwan. Positioned on the periphery and under disadvantaged circumstances, Taiwan nevertheless refuses to be silent and learns to have a voice of its own. The parenthesis in line 5 of stanza 2 fulfills two important functions: it interrupts the catalog of “o” sounds, thus putting an end to the perfect symmetry begun in the first stanza, and it completes the short sentence, also begun in the first stanza. Hinging on a single parenthesis, the intervention of the voice affirms a modest yet irrefutable presence against an overpowering monolith.

Along with “The Movement of No Tongue-Curling,” “A Lesson in Ventriloquy” epitomizes a positive nativist poetics that envisions an open, diverse, and cosmopolitan Taiwan—in short, a cultural and artistic frontier. As an island, Taiwan is fully aware of its marginal position vis-à-vis the mainland. At the same time, however, the poet proudly affirms Taiwan’s dignity as a self-sufficient world—complete, beautiful, and perfect in its own way. In contrast to the jarring u and o noises, Taiwan is music to his ear. A perfect union of form and content, “A Lesson in Ventriloquy” attests to the ultimate concern of the poet with poetic art rather than with message, political or otherwise. The bold experiment in form and language evident in Chen’s recent work suggests that “periphery” has yet another meaning that goes beyond the personal and the political. On the cover of The Edge of the Island, we see a map of Taiwan filled in with words: the title of the book and the words “nativism + the world” (bentu yu shijie) and “nativism + the avant garde” (bentu yu qianwei), are not only repeated many times but also highlighted in different colors. Together, these phrases represent the poet’s creative ideal, which is to combine nativism with a cosmopolitan, multicultural vision on the one hand and with the avant garde on the other. “Avant garde” refers to both the philosophical underpinnings and the artistic intention of the poems.

The poet’s avant-gardism is in sharp contrast to some forms of nativism in Taiwan, which tend to pitch the native and local against the international and cosmopolitan, or, in more recent years, the “native Taiwanese” or Taiwanren—Chinese people living in Taiwan prior to 1945—against the “mainlander” or Waishengren—newer mainland émigrés who came to the island between 1945 and 1949. Instead, Chen emphasizes multiplicity over singularity, mutual respect and acceptance rather than privileging one subethnic group over another. The ethnic, linguistic, and cultural roots of Taiwan include at least the Portuguese, the Dutch, the Japanese, Han Chinese, and the indigenous. “The Song of the Island—For the Children of Taiwan” (“Daoyu zhi ge—gei Taiwan de haizi”) begins with these lines:

The poem ends with a list of twenty Chinese dialects and the languages of the indigenous tribes. For the poet, Taiwan has not one but many mother tongues.

Cataloguing is a device also used in “Flying Over the Island” (“Daoyu feixing”), in which the names of all ninety-five mountains of Taiwan are juxtaposed. Some of the names are Chinese in origin, but many more are aboriginal. Personified as former classmates at primary school, the mountains gather for a class reunion and are getting ready for a group photo:

I hear them calling me together

“Keke’erbao, come down quick

You are late!”

Those standing, sitting, squatting there

Whose names I almost can’t remember

They are all there, together

In the frame

Like a miniature map

(translated by Michelle Yeh)

Taiwan is an island full of vitality, a combination of different ethnic groups and different cultural elements—more than the so-called ‘four major ethnic groups’—indigenous, Hokkien, Hakka, and mainlander. As early as the seventeenth century, Taiwan was a global stage. The Spanish came, the Portuguese passed through, the Dutch colonized it, the Japanese ruled it … together they have formed the uniqueness of Taiwan: a vitality born of continuous blending and tolerance. Naturally there are some pains or conflicts, but in the final analysis it is magnificently moving.

(Chen Li 1995:205)

These words aptly characterize modern Chinese poetry in Taiwan, which represents a synthesis of heterogeneous forces and contending visions: aboriginal and Han Chinese, Chinese and Japanese, traditional and modern, local and global, “mainlander” and “Taiwanese,” Taiwanese and Chinese. Out of this historical and ongoing process has emerged the distinct identity of Taiwanese poetry.

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