Graduate Institute of Taiwanese Literature, NCCU

Title  Another Field in Taiwan ─ The Natural Writing of Li Chiao’s “Vegetation Kindness” Author Chen, Welin-Lin Professor, Institute of Taiwan Literature/ Institute of Sinophone, National Tsing Hua University Abstract The old writer Li Chiao has published the new book “Vegetation Kindness”, which records Taiwan’s plants and flowers in the field and narrates the self life experience recently. The book is briefly divided into 62 chapters which are named after vegetations and the illustrated chapters are attached. Each chapter structure broadly includes 3 points: first, it is the introduction of notes for the illustrated handbook of similar kind of plants, and their meanings are named in Hakka, Minnan dialect and Chinese; second, it is to use the vivid words to narrate various stories about vegetations’experience and the intersections in each stage of his own life; third, it is involved in the local features of plants and collective historical memory of Taiwan. Therefore, this paper takes Vegetation Kindness as a green map leading to “locality”, “life” and “historic culture” to seek for the Li Chiao’s diversified and plentiful green rhetoric with far-reaching figurative meaning according to the map, so as to observe another dimension of natural writing in Taiwan. In addition, Li Chiao also uses the biological species as the writing theme of “Three Friends of Land, Sea and Air”, which will also be listed as an intertextual reading, to grasp the multi-view of Li Chiao’s writing of the natural ecological race.

Title Journey of Growth: Searching the Meanings of Life in Pangcah Girl Author Lin, Shu-Hui Professor, Department of Taiwan Culture, Languages and Literature, National Taiwan Normal University Abstract Growing up is a journey of learning how to live and finding the meaning of life. Bildungsroman, focusing on main characters’ experience in society, is a good teaching material for life education. In Gan Yao-ming’s Pangcah Girl, the illustration of characters’ enlightenment process provides an aspect to understand life in the context of collective relations. Being faced with conflicts in life, choices of life situations, and helping friends to get out of the self-blaming trauma, it seems that by passing through such rituals, the protagonist Gu A-xia is successfully marching toward a more intelligent stage. By visiting the forest farm of Morisaka and reading relevant texts, the author presents the landscape of logging in the Central Mountain Range in the 1970s and interprets the core values of growth through imagination and irony. The characters in the novel grow in their traveling, looking for the value of life. This fiction implies how people could get along with the nature, and expresses the eternal meaning of life practice. By braiding and reorganizing the stories, it conveys the value of life and triggers readers’ empathy. This article explores the theme of how the narrative of the novel interprets the meaning of life from two aspects: travel and self-growth and the transformation of material.

Title Healthy Land and Ideal Custom: Custom Discourses on Taiwan and Manchuria in Japanese Colonial Period Author Tsai, Pei-Chun Project Assistant Professor, Literacy Center for Creative Writing and Course Development, Providence University Abstract Through the analysis of and comparison between the hygiene discourses and travel guides on Japanese colonies, this paper attempts to point out how the foreign images of Taiwan/Manchuria are produced and disseminated and how political policies change Japan’s custom domestication and foreign hygiene discourses. Second, I will also analyze the travel guides on Taiwan and Manchuria officially published by Japan in order to figure out the connection between custom discourses and colonial governance. I try to point out how travel guides introduce, categorize, and position the ecology and humanistic resources of different regions in temperate and tropical zones through different issues and narrative modes and how the introduction of local custom becomes the promotion highlight for foreign tourism. In terms of the analysis and comparison, I will further understand how Taiwan and Manchuria are seen, known, and narrated.

Title The Literary View of Yeh Rung Zhong shown in the modern Taiwan drama debate in 1929 Author Pai, Chun-Yen Doctoral Candidate, Institute of Taiwan Literature, National Tsing Hua University Abstract Modern Taiwan drama debate occurred by Yeh Rung Zhong in 1929 was concerned with the modern drama theory and drama scripts. The previous research treated this debate as a part of the discussion of New and Old Literature, and overlooked the character of the first modern drama discussion. This assey put this debate under the literature and drama history to find out its value in the new drama development which belonged to the new culture movement. This assey also traced the original reference quoted in Yeh Rung Zhong’s articles and analyzed his literary view according to Japan and China drama critics’ writing context. This assey pointed out three views. First, the anti-traditional idea of May Fourth literary revolution movement affected Yeh Rung Zhong to criticize the old literature writers for the moral value of literary views. Second, “The People’s Theatre” written by Romain Rolland, the proletarian modern drama movement in Japan and the drama views of Chinese drama critic Sung Chun Fang inspired Yeh Rung Zhong to build his “Enlightened literary view”. Yeh Rung Zhong argued that only the drama which art and entertainment coexist can attract audiences, and also achieve the purpose of cultivating people’s hobbies and characters. Third, this assey became conscious about a cross-border interchanges of the drama theories among Japan, China and Taiwan, and the Taiwan new literature movement was effected by Japan and China’s dissemination of literary trends by clarifying the propagation paths. These paths showed the diversity and twistiness when foreign thoughts propagated into Taiwan during the Japanese ruled period.

Title Envisioning Taiwanese Sinophone: Some Reflections on “Chineseness” and “Community” Author Chung, Chih-Wei Doctoral Candidate, Graduate Institute of Taiwan Literature, National Taiwan University Abstract This paper seeks to reflect upon the many possibilities to approach Taiwanese literature and culture under the development of Sinophone studies. On the one hand, since Sinophone studies attempts to reevaluate the multiple discourses on “Chineseness,” it allows many Taiwan scholars to reevaluate the relationship between Taiwan and China while redefining what is “Taiwanese identity.” On the other hand, Sinophone studies, as a concept evolving in the academic field in North America, may not be an applicable concept while it is adopted in the study of Taiwan. How applicable is the Sinophone paradigm in the study of Taiwan has yielded much scholarly debate. This paper attempts to engage into this discussion through evaluating the blindness and insights shown in works advocating Sinophone studies and those promoting localism in Taiwan. Inspired by David Der-wei Wang’s Sinophone discourse and his “post-loyalism,” this paper proposes the concept of “derivative China” which complicates the numerous identities and styles found in Sinophone narratives. This paper also seeks to probe into the concept of “Taiwanese interpretative community” coined by Pei-fong Chen, which is closely related to the transmissions and transformations of “Chinesness” in Taiwan. An investigation of this concept allows us to expand our understanding on Sinophone culture in this island where serial colonialism occurred. Furthermore, this paper would borrow Italian theorist Giorgio Agamben’s thoughts about “community” in order to envision a more radical Taiwanese Sinophone. Building in particular on the basis of Agamben’s elaborations on “singularity” and “whatever,” this paper proposes that Taiwanese Sinophone community should view the relationships between different identities as “exposure” rather than “representation.” Only in this sense, Taiwanese Sinophone community would indeed be a community that embraces plurality and reflexivity.