Zhong Lihe and Wu Zhuoliu

CHAPTER 6 The Lure of China: Zhong Lihe and Wu Zhuoliu Concurrent with most of the writers discussed above, Zhong Lihe and Wu Zhuoliu were relatively marginalized in Taiwan’s literary history prior to 1945. Zhong published very little during his lifetime, while Wu was more often seen as the first-generation of postwar native Taiwanese writers. Nevertheless, both writers’ Chinese experience provided a valuable angle to discuss the produc- tion of Taiwan’s colonial subjectivity in the late years of Japanese rule and under KMT governance. Their works show an alternative vision different from that offered by those writers who had Japanese experience or those who sim- ply remained in Taiwan. Born in 1915 to a land-owning family in a Hakka village of South Taiwan, Zhong Lihe grew up with less direct impact from Japanese colonial rule. While attending the Japanese-language primary school, Zhong learned Chinese in a private school during the summertime. He was not qualified to take the en- trance examination for the Kaohsiung High School due to a poor result from the physical examination, hence he enrolled in the equivalent advanced degree at Nagaji Public School in 1928, and spent his leisure time reading Chinese classical novels such as the ancient story entitled Yang Wenguang pingman shibadong (Yang Wenguang’s Pacification of the Eighteen Grottoes). Upon graduation in 1930, Zhong entered the village private school to study Chinese for one and a half years. Inspired by his teacher, a xiucai (flowering talent, the lowest degree one could receive in imperial China by passing the district examination) scholar named Guang Daxing, Zhong started to compose some folk stories and a novel entitled Yuyehua (Flowers on a Rainy Night) while con- tinuing to read classical and modern Chinese fiction.1 In his “Lüli” (Resumé), Zhong expressed his fondness for the works of Lu Xun, Lao She, Mao Dun, and Yu Dafu. In 1932, Zhong and his family moved to Qishan to assist in the cultiva- tion of the local mountains for farming, here he met and later fell in love with Zhong Taimei, a laborer four years his senior. Due to the fact that marriage within the same surname was forbidden at that time, they eventually eloped. With encouragement from his half brother, Zhong began to experiment with Chinese creative writing. In 1937, he wrote “Lifajiang de lianai” (Love of a Barber), his earliest existing, though unpublished, work. Zhong left Taiwan 1 Unfortunately, drafts of Zhong’s early works have been lost. It is said that Flowers on a Rainy Night was unfinished. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��7 | doi ��.��63/978900434450�_008 The Lure Of China: Zhong Lihe And Wu Zhuoliu 233 in June 1938, arriving in Manchuria via Japan. He enrolled in the Manchuria Automobile School, where he received a professional driving license, and worked as a driver. He then returned to Taiwan in July 1940 to fetch Taimei. The couple set off from Taiwan on August 3, 1940. They traveled by boat from Taiwan to Moji, a port in Southern Japan, got on another boat from Shimonoseki to Busan, Korea, and finally arrived in Fengtian (today’s Shenyang). These experi- ences later became the background for several of his works such as “Bentao” (Running Away), “Tongxing zhi hun” (Marriage of the Same Surname), “Liuyin” (In the Willow Shade), “Taidong lüguan” (Taidong Hotel), and “Men” (The Door). Zhong and Taimei settled in Beiping in 1941. Though Zhong came to earn his living as a coal merchant, he spent most of his time writing and published Jiazhutao (Oleander), a dystopian novella depicting the Chinese people’s life and character, in Beiping in 1945.2 Zhong resettled in Taiwan one year later, working briefly as a junior high school teacher. He suffered from tuberculosis from 1947 onward and was hospi- talized accordingly. After his discharge from the hospital in 1950, he remained productive until his premature death in 1960. Zhong’s first book in Taiwan, Yu (Rain), was published with the assistance of some literary friends (especial- ly Lin Haiyin) who raised the funds to cover the publication costs. Although his Lishan nongchang (Lishan Farm) won the second award of the Chinese Literature and Art Funding Committee in 1956,3 Zhong’s works attracted lim- ited attention in the fifties. It was in the seventies that Zhong became recog- nized more widely as a writer skilled at capturing the life of Taiwanese farmers in depth. In 2014, an English version of Zhong’s several literary sketches of China and Taiwan was published.4 Existing scholarship on Zhong which concentrates primarily on his hu- manitarian social consciousness can be seen in Zhang Liangze’s essay,5 Peng 2 Zhong considered the four stories compiled in Jiazhutao (Oleander) a “failure” mainly be- cause of the linguistic barrier. He explained that he had to teach himself Chinese (through the Romanization of the Hakka language). Hence his Chinese was “stiff and messy.” See “Zhong Lihe ziwo jieshao” (Zhong Lihe’s Self-Introduction), Zhong Lihe quanji (Complete Works of Zhong Lihe) 6 (Kaohsiung: Kaohsiung County Cultural Center, 1997) edited by Zhong Tiemin, p. 219. 3 There was no first prize that year. Despite this official recognition, the work never got published during Zhong’s lifetime. 4 See Zhong Lihe’s From the Old Country: Stories and Sketches of China and Taiwan, edited and translated by T. M. McClellan (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014). 5 Zhang Liangze, “Zhong Lihe zuopin lun” (On Zhong Lihe’s Works), Zhonghua ribao (Chinese Daily News) (December 13–16, 1973)..

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