2002
First Published
3.80
Average Rating
328
Number of Pages
Pioneering writer on the complexity and ambiguity of the Taiwanese identity, humanist and moderate Wu Zhuoliu (1900-1976), a Taiwanese Hakka, looks back over his life from the perspective of the 28 February 1947 massacres, describing his rural childhood in the Japanese colony of Taiwan, his growing political consciousness as a teacher in the island's Japanese school system and his traumatic realization, after a war-time visit to China, that the idealized 'motherland' was no more his home than Japan was. An indictment of the colonial experience and of Chiang Kai-shek's repressive Nationalist government in pre-democratic Taiwan, The Fig Tree chronicles Wu's, almost reluctant, espousal of a separate Taiwanese identity. Valuable additions to this translation by Duncan Hunter are commentaries by Jean-Pierre Cabestan, Director of the Hong Kong-based French Centre for Research on Contemporary China - How open-ended is Taiwan's future? - and the late Helmut Martin, formerly Professor of Chinese Language and Literature at the Ruhr University, Bochum, Germany -Wu Zhuoliu's autobiographies: Acts of resistance against repression and oblivion. These, together with the text itself, the chapter notes and international bibliography, make The Fig Tree essential reading for all students of Taiwan, issues of culture and identity, and of China/Taiwan relations.
Avg Rating
3.80
Number of Ratings
10
5 STARS
10%
4 STARS
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3 STARS
10%
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Author
Wu Zhuoliu
Author · 3 books
Wu Chuo-liu (吳濁流) (1900–1976) was an influential Taiwanese journalist and novelist. His experiences during the colonial period, including fifteen months (January 1941-March 1942) spent in China, served as an inspiration for his most famous work, Orphan of Asia, a semi-autobiographical account of the experiences of a fictional protagonist—Hu Taiming—during the course of the colonial period. This work, which highlighted the ambiguity and tension inherent in being Taiwanese, has since become a key text in the contentious subject of Taiwanese identity. He is also known for his autobiography 無花果, translated by Duncan Hunter as The Fig Tree. (from Wikipedia)
