Introduction to Postwar Taiwan Fiction Unit 12 Lost in a Big City: Stories by Chang Ta-chun and Huang Fan Lecturer: Richard Rong-bin Chen, PhD of Comparative

Introduction to Postwar Taiwan Fiction

Unit 12 Lost in a Big City: Stories by Chang Ta-chun and Huang Fan

Lecturer:

Richard Rong-bin Chen,

PhD of Comparative Literature.

Unless noted, the course materials are licensed under Creative Commons Unless noted, the course materials are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Taiwan (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) 1

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The City in LiteratureTwo-way Migration

National Taiwan University Richard Rong-bin Chen


Urban Literature in the 1980s

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• The city in literature

• “The Taste of Apples” [蘋果的滋味 ]

• “Hsiao Lin in Taipei” [小林來台北 ]

• “The Drowning of an Old Cat” [溺死一隻老貓 ]

• “A Love Letter Never Sent” [一封未寄的情書 ]

• “My Son, Hansheng” [我兒漢生 ]

• Urban Literature

• “A Guided Tour of an Apartment Complex” [公寓導遊 ]

• “A History of Condo Sales” [房地產銷售史 ]

Urban Literature The Urban World Itself

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The Rise of Urban Literature• Made possible by economic prosperity

since the 1970s.

• Made possible by the writers’ urban life experience.

• Political freedom.

• City is not only a setting, but also a socialized and institutionalized space.

• Social problems: chaotic life, class oppression, urban development, social alienation, etc.

Crystal Boys [孽子 ] (1983) by Pai Hsien-yun

• ”First Asian Gay Novel.”

• Taipei represented through a dichotomous structure.

• The dividing line?

• West District vs. East District [Old vs. New; The Poor vs. The rich; The Local vs. The International.]

• Compare New York and Japan with Taipei.6

Urban Literature in the 1980s

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• Chang Ta-chun

• “Speaker of the Aside” [旁白者 ]

• “Alley 116, Liaoning Street” [遼寧街一一六巷 ]

• “Lucky Worries about His Country” [四喜憂國 ]

• Huang Fan

• “A Man of Scruples, Shu-ming Fan, the Just and the Fair“ [范銘樞的正直 ]

• “A Rainy Night” [雨夜 ]

Chang Ta-chun

• 1957: born in Taipei City.

• Education: attained both BA and MA degrees from Fu Jen Catholic University (Department and Graduate Institute of Chinese Literature).

• One of the most prolific Taiwan writers since the 1980s.

• Used to be an instructor of Chinese Literature in Fu Jen and a host of TV programs, now a host in a FM radio talk-show (FM 98.1).

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Chang’s Versatility

• Science fiction [〈病變〉 ]

• Historical and political novel [“Lucky Worries about His Country” （〈四喜憂國〉） and《撒謊的信徒》 ]

• Magic Realism [“The General’s Monument”（〈將軍碑〉） ]

• Postmodern meta-fiction [“If Lin Hsiu-hsiung Had(n’t)”（〈如果林秀雄〉） ]

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• Post-1949 writing [“Birds of a Feather”（〈雞翎圖〉） ]

• Youth literature [Wild Kids（《野孩子》） and 　 My Kid Sister (《我妹妹》 )]

• (Auto)Biographical fiction writing about family lives [Listening to My Father (《聆聽父親》 )]

• Martial art novel [The Urban Legion of Mobsters (《城邦暴力團》 )]

”A Guided Tour of an Apartment Complex” (1986) by Chang Ta-chun

• First published in Unitas [《聯合文學》 ]

• Story Structure?

• Gathering place and episodes.

• The ending.

• The theme?

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Spatially Connected, but Socially Disconnected

• All the residents in the complex were unknowingly closely related to each other.

• This story is both a micro and macro-perspective of the society. Through this story, we can understand how urban novels and stories are written on the basis of the structure of a city.

• Also, the many jobs of the residents make this building an epitome of the society.

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The Fortune Building [富禮大廈 ]

富禮大廈 The Fortune Building



14National Taiwan University Richard Rong-bin Chen


• Kuan Yiu-kai (關祐開 ): the custodian.

• 12A Fan Yang-fan (范揚帆 ) and Lin Nan-shih (林南施 ): the architect.

• 9A Ke Kai-ti (柯凱帝 )and Tao Ta-wei (陶大偉 ): the TV producer and TV program host.

• 7A Wei Tan-cheng (魏丹誠 ) and Mrs. Wei and kids

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The Characters

• 6A James Jennings and his girlfriend, Susan: lawyer.

• 12B Mrs. Chi (齊老太太 )

• 8B Yi Wan-chun (易婉君 ): a part-time nightclub hostess

• 4B Liang Lung-jun (梁隆潤 ): a retired general.

• 10C Chang Teh-chung (張德充 ): an assistant manager of an insurance company.

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• 9C Liu Chih-jen (劉志仁 ): a tea merchant.

• 7C Huang Hsiao-ling (黃曉玲 ) & Chu Kuo-tung(朱國棟 )

• 3C Lai Ching-tsai (賴進財 ) and his wife: a lottery winner.

• 12D Kuan ti-fan (管滌凡 ): a painter.

• 11D Lin Ping-hung (林秉宏 ) and Mrs. Lin: a manager of a trading company.

• 5D Wu Pao-ming and his kids17

• “Fully,” or “Foolish”?

• Fu Li Mansion, or Fortune Building?

• In the beginning of the short story, we are told that the architect Fan Yang-fan [范揚帆 ] was not satisfied with the English translation because there is not any corresponding word in English which can express the Chinese phrase “Fu Li,” or “wealth and civility.”

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The Implication of the Name of the Building.

• For example, the custodian, a retired lieutenant colonel of high school, used to pee in the elevator after drinking.(3) Every time he was cleaning the elevator mat, he always thought about the single lady Yi Wan-chun [易婉君 ] 8B because she had nice breasts and well-padded bottom (4).

• Yi Wan-chun was also a woman with secret: she moonlighted three nights a week in Sister King’s place, which might be some kind of high-class brothel or nightclub (11).

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Wealthy, but Not Civilized

Source: Chang Ta-chun. (Winter, 1989). Chen I-djen (Trans.), Chinese pen, Taipei, Taiwan : Taipei Chinese Center, International P.E.N


http://get.nccu.edu.tw:8080/getcdb/handle/getcdb/127023



• Lin Ping-hung [林秉宏 ], a trading company manager and an insomniac, though hard-working and educated, cheated regularly on his wife (6).

• Neither was Chang Teh-chung [張德充 ], the resident of 10C and an assistant manager of an insurance company, a descent person, because he had been having private deals with the auto repair shops in order to jack up prices (15).

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• Lin Nan-shih, the architect’s wife, thought that the building was “an instrument of alienation” [疏離的象徵 ] (2).

Her impression on the building might express the major idea that Chang Ta-chun wanted to convey through this story. The residents there were not civilized; what is worse, we can see among them many cases of the alienation of a highly prosperous modern society.

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Social Alienation



• Those Who Cheat

• Manager Lin cheated on his wife, and General Liang would have done that with his folkdance partner, a middle-aged widow, hadn’t he had his prostate operation already (7).

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• Those Who Don’t Get Married

• Huang Hsiao-ling [黃曉玲 ] and Chu kuo-tung [朱國棟 ], the couple in 7C, were not having a stable relationship because, judging from Chu’s concept of marriage, Huang thought Chu would not marry her (12). After they fell out, Chu would go to a dance hall in order to have a good time with other women.

• Those Who Suspect

• Also, we see Wei Tan-cheng [魏丹誠 ], a man thought his wife had been cheated on him, living in 7A (13-14).

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• Those Who Die

• Mrs. Chi, who died from a heart attack because her son and daughter-in-law both lived abroad (12).

• Toward the end of the story, we are about to witness a “double tragedy”: after Lin Nan-shih jumped down from the top of the building, she was about to crash on Lai Ching-tsai [賴進財 ], ironically a recent lottery winner of three million NT dollars (23).

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• Why did the architect’s wife commit suicide?

• The couples

• Fan Yang-fan and Lin Nan-shih

• Wei Tan-cheng and Mrs. Wei

• Huang Hsiao-ling and Chu Kuo-tung

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Chang’s Perspective on Marriage in the City

• Chu Kuo-tung’s Perspective on Marriage

• “That’s the way it goes after marriage, a skirmish every couple of days, a battle every 5 of 6 days.”(p.14)

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• 1950: born in Taipei. He is a graduate of Chung Yuan College of Science and Engineering [中原理工學院 ].

• In 1979, with “Lai Suo” [賴索 ] , his first piece of fiction, he won the United Daily News fiction competition. “Lai Suo” is a short story with the theme of politics set in the 1970s, a period which was both confusing and exciting for many Taiwanese. (Lai Suo is a marginal and naïve figure in Taiwan’s “Independence Movement.”)

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Huang Fan

• Though among Huang’s first pieces of fiction, “Everybody Needs Ch’in Te-fu” [人人需要秦德夫 ] had been rejected for about two years before it was finally published in Hsientai wenhsueh [《現代文學》 ], the journal founded by Pai Hsien-yung, in 1980, a year later than “Lai Suo.”

• “Everybody Needs Ch’in Te-fu”: Huang’s version of The Great Gatsby.

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• In the 1980s, Huang Fan developed himself into a pioneer in both the spheres of “Urban Fiction” and “Postmodern Fiction.”

• In the former category, his representative works are City Life (《都市生活》 , published in 1987) and Tycoon (《財閥》 , published in 1988).

• In 1985, he published “How to Measure the Width of a Ditch” (〈如何測量水溝的寬度〉 ), arguably the first postmodern work of fiction in Taiwan. (For this piece, check Huang’s newly published Zero and Other Fictions.)

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“Urban Fiction” and “Postmodern Fiction”

• After Taiwan’s defeat in the sphere of international politics and the political tumults in the 1970s, an economic boom greater than ever rose to stimulate its urban development.

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Huang’s Literary Obsession with the Urban World

• A native of the area around Longshan Temple, Huang Fan used to say, the urban world in Taiwan was a mixture of New York, Tokyo, and Calcutta where new communities sprang up “like forests present a frightening sameness,” no one was “obliged to be good-tempered,” English could be learned in seven days, and anyone could intimidate the taxman and be a success before forty. What is most ironic for Huang Fan is that even the monk in charge of Longshan Temple’s hospitality can speak fluent English!

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• First published in the supplement to United Daily News [《聯合報》副刊 ]) in May, 1987

• Like Huang’s “How to Measure the Width of a Ditch” [〈如何測量水溝的寬度〉 ] (1985), this story has always been described as both his and Taiwan’s first Postmodern short stories.

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”A History of Condo Sales” (1987)

• Postmodern stories or novels do not try to tell story or to make sense because they are mainly about exploring the possibilities of storytelling: that is, how stories can be told and how a plot can be manipulated in order to make readers reflect upon the nature of fiction as a genre.

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• I – The name of the construction company

• II – Juo and his complaints about the architecture industry

• III – Juo’s monumental project

• IV – His project under way

• V – Juo’s boss wanted to join the project

• VI – Project completed with an unexpected ending

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The Story Structure

• The story’s opening section is mainly about the relationship between the names of the company and the owner, and the many analogies brought out by the narrator-protagonist, Juo Yao-tsong. Toward the end of the first section, Juo proposed a question: do all those discussions about names and analogies make sense? Actually, they make no sense at all from the perspective of story, but do make sense from that of storytelling.

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The Opening Section

• “Everything about it is tiny. Tiny living room. Tiny bedrooms. Tiny chairs and tables. In fact, it’s made in the perfect scale of a kindergartener.”

• The Complex of Inferiority?

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The Ending

• The boss

• The wife

• the participants

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The Characters

• Chang Hong-zhong / Male / Age: 34

• A Single

• Lee Ching-li / Female / Age: 28

• A housewife

• Tsai Tien-lin / Male / Age: 53

• A Feng-shui practitioner

• Ke Yu-mei / Female / Age: 32

• A fashion designer38

The Participants of the Project

• Zhen shiang-yen / Male / Age: 45

• A man with two wives

• Zao Nien / Male / Age: 46

• A private detective

• Chien De-jing / Male / Age: 39

• A lottery winner

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• After the long diversion [離題 ], Juo went back to the main stuff of this story, the essence of architecture and how it should be done in order to fit human nature and the needs of people. The name coined by Juo’s journalist friend is most suitable for this theme: “the buffet-style building.”

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The Theme and Social Background

• The story is written in the first heyday of Taiwan’s “condo sales.” Condo prices started to rise higher than ever, and many businessmen and land owners also became wealthier than ever for selling buildings or lands.

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• In 1989, two years after the story had been published, a social movement named “the Movement of the Shell-less Snails” [無殼蝸牛運動 ] was initiated to draw nationwide attention. People who could not afford to buy their own houses or departments stood up to protest against the rising real estate prices, but the effect was limited.

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• The Urban Problems

• Many of the urban problems in those days can be found in the fourth section, the episode of the “team-building trip” around the island for all the buffet-style building participants

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“ Freeways are absolutely the murderers of traditional communities. The towns that freeways cut through have been completely bled of their unique cultures.”

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The Urban Problems: Freeways

Source: This article of “A History of Condo Sales” is from the website of “WORDS without BORDERS” http://wordswithoutborders.org/article/a-history-of-condo-sales. The original source is from Huang Fan (2005). 房地產銷售史 (Kevin Tang Trans.) 黃凡後現代小說選 . Taipei: Unitas Press.It is used subject to the fair use doctrine of:•Article 52 & 65 of Taiwan Copyright Act.

http://wordswithoutborders.org/article/a-history-of-condo-sales


• “Isn’t that right? Just to accommodate those freeways, everyone’s been building the same cookie-cutter houses, building higher fences. Grayness envelopes everything. Darkness is everywhere.”

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The Urban Problems: Sameness in the City




“The way Taiwanese people trample their own living environment is simply astonishing. Roads need repair all the time, bridges built with no foresight, tunnels dug everywhere. No street is spared.”

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The Urban Problems: No Urban Planning




“It’s worse in the big cities. Buildings sprout like weed. We might as well call it a ‘world architecture chop suey’—zero color coordination, no fire escapes, no leisure spaces, all concrete jungle.”

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The Urban Problems: World Architecture Chop Suey




Copyright DeclarationPage Work Licensing Author/Source

2 National Taiwan University Richard Rong-bin Chen




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For example, the custodian, …used to pee in the elevator after drinking.

Chang Ta-chun. (Winter, 1989). Chen I-djen (Trans.), Chinese pen, (p.3) Taipei, Taiwan : Taipei Chinese Center, International P.E.NIt is used subject to the fair use doctrine of:•Articles 52 & 65 of Taiwan Copyright Act.

48







19

Every time he was cleaning …had nice breasts and well-padded bottom .


19

Yi Wan-chun was also a woman …kind of high-class brothel or nightclub .


20

Lin Ping-hung [林秉宏 ], a trading …educated, cheated regularly on his wife.


20Neither was Chang Teh-chung …shops in order to jack up prices.


21

Lin Nan-shih, the …was “an instrument of alienation” [疏離的象徵 ]

Chang Ta-chun. (Winter, 1989). Chen I-djen (Trans.), Chinese pen, (p.2) Taipei, Taiwan : Taipei Chinese Center, International P.E.NIt is used subject to the fair use doctrine of:•Articles 52 & 65 of Taiwan Copyright Act. 49







22

Manager Lin cheated on his wife, …he had his prostate operation already .


23

Huang Hsiao-ling [黃曉玲 ] and Chu kuo-tung …thought Chu would not marry her .


23

Also, we see Wei Tan-cheng [魏丹誠 ], a man thought…him, living in 7A .

Chang Ta-chun. (Winter, 1989). Chen I-djen (Trans.), Chinese pen, (p.13-14) Taipei, Taiwan : Taipei Chinese Center, International P.E.NIt is used subject to the fair use doctrine of:•Articles 52 & 65 of Taiwan Copyright Act.

24

Mrs. Chi, who died from a heart attack because her son and daughter-in-law both lived abroad .


24Toward the end of the story, we …of three million NT dollars.

Chang Ta-chun. (Winter, 1989). Chen I-djen (Trans.), Chinese pen, (p.23) Taipei, Taiwan : Taipei Chinese Center, International P.E.NIt is used subject to the fair use doctrine of:•Articles 52 & 65 of Taiwan Copyright Act. 50





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That’s the way it goes after …every couple of days, a battle every 5 of 6 days.

Chang Ta-chun. (Winter, 1989). Chen I-djen (Trans.), Chinese pen, (p.14) Taipei, Taiwan : Taipei Chinese Center, International P.E.N.It is used subject to the fair use doctrine of:•Articles 52 & 65 of Taiwan Copyright Act.

44Freeways are absolutely … bled of their unique cultures.

This article of “A History of Condo Sales” is from the website of “WORDS without BORDERS” http://wordswithoutborders.org/article/a-history-of-condo-sales. The original source is from Huang Fan (2005). 房地產銷售史 (Kevin Tang Trans.) 黃凡後現代小說選 . Taipei: Unitas Press.It is used subject to the fair use doctrine of:•Article 52 & 65 of Taiwan Copyright Act.

45

“Isn’t that right? Just to accommodate those …everything. Darkness is everywhere.


46

The way Taiwanese people …dug everywhere. No street is spared.


47

It’s worse in the big cities. …no leisure spaces, all concrete jungle.


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Documents

Introduction to Postwar Taiwan Fiction Unit 12 Lost in a Big City: Stories by Chang Ta-chun and Huang Fan Lecturer: Richard Rong-bin Chen, PhD of Comparative