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"Taiwan History 1945- Fiction."
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Remains of life : a novel
\"On October 27, 1930 during an annual sports meet held at Musha Elementary School on an aboriginal reservation deep in the mountains of Taiwan there occurred a bloody uprising unlike anything Japan had ever witnessed in its colonial history. Before noon the Atayal tribe had summarily slain one hundred and thirty-four Japanese in a headhunting ritual that shook the very foundations of Japan's colonial empire. The Japanese responded to what would later become known as the \"Musha Incident\" with a militia of three thousand, heavy artillery, airplanes, and internationally banned poisonous gas. The Atayal of Musha were brought to the brink of genocide. Nearly seventy years later, Chen Guocheng, a writer best known by his poetic penname Wu He, or \"Dancing Crane,\" traveled to Musha to investigate the long forgotten Musha Incident and search for the \"remains of life\" - the survivors of the incident and their descendants. Exploring the impetus behind this disturbing historical event and questioning its legitimacy and accuracy, Wu He walks a tightrope between the primitive and the civilized, beauty and violence, fact and fiction. The result is Remains of Life, a powerful and disturbing literary voyage into perhaps the darkest chapter of Taiwan's colonial history. This one-of-a-kind work is a milestone in Chinese literature and marks the arrival of a major literary voice in the Chinese speaking world. Upon its publication in Taiwan, the novel was awarded virtually every major national literary award including the Taipei Creative Writing Award for Literature, The China Times' Ten Best Books of the Year Award, The United Daily Readers' Choice Award, Ming Pao's Ten Best Books of the Year Award, and the Kingstone Award for Most Influential Book of the Year\" -- Provided by publisher.
Book
Representing Atrocity in Taiwan
In 1945, Taiwan was placed under the administrative control of the Republic of China, and after two years, accusations of corruption and a failing economy sparked a local protest that was brutally quashed by the Kuomintang government. The February Twenty-Eighth (or 2/28) Incident led to four decades of martial law that became known as the White Terror. During this period, talk of 2/28 was forbidden and all dissent violently suppressed, but since the lifting of martial law in 1987, this long-buried history has been revisited through commemoration and narrative, cinema and remembrance.
Drawing on a wealth of secondary theoretical material as well as her own original research, Sylvia Li-chun Lin conducts a close analysis of the political, narrative, and ideological structures involved in the fictional and cinematic representations of the 2/28 Incident and White Terror. She assesses the role of individual and collective memory and institutionalized forgetting, while underscoring the dangers of re-creating a historical past and the risks of trivialization. She also compares her findings with scholarly works on the Holocaust and the aftermath of the atomic bombings of Japan, questioning the politics of forming public and personal memories and the political teleology of \"closure.\" This is the first book to be published in English on the 2/28 Incident and White Terror and offers a valuable matrix of comparison for studying the portrayal of atrocity in a specific locale.
eBook
The lost garden
In this eloquent and atmospheric novel, Li Ang further cements her reputation as one of our most sophisticated contemporary Chinese-language writers.The Lost Gardenmoves along two parallel lines. In one, we relive the family saga of Zhu Yinghong, whose father, Zhu Zuyan, was a gentry intellectual imprisoned for dissent in the early days of Chiang Kai-shek's rule. After his release, Zhu Zuyan literally walled himself in his Lotus Garden, which he rebuilt according to his own desires.
Forever under suspicion, Zhu Zuyan indulged as much as he could in circumscribed pleasures, though they drained the family fortune. Eventually everything belonging to the household had to be sold, including the Lotus Garden. The second storyline picks up in modern-day Taipei as Zhu Yinghong meets Lin Xigeng, a real estate tycoon and playboy. Their cat-and-mouse courtship builds against the extravagant banquets and decadent entertainments of Taipei's wealthy businessmen. Though the two ultimately marry, their high-styled romance dulls over time, forcing them on a quest to rediscover enchantment in the Lotus Garden. An expansive narrative rich with intimate detail,The Lost Gardenis a moving portrait of the losses incurred as we struggle to hold on to our passions.
eBook