Szilágyi András (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 23. (Budapest, 2004)

Kornélia MAJOR: The Park of Loyalty and Filial Piety. Chen Yingzhen's Latest Short Stories

knowledge became art, his judgement became a form of aesthetics, his views on society turned into literature and his patriotism degraded into a kind of characteristically Chinese family solidarity."

h He identifies with China and Chinese culture but does not realise that doing so he makes an unconscious judgement of himself. He clearly perceives his uselessness and hopelessness; nonetheless, he sees no other way out than suicide. Chen Yingzhen's critics have pointed out the significant fact that Chen's characters are usually uprooted creatures. They have been cut from their culture and do not have the opportunity to influence the fate of their homeland. This is why they cannot find their place in the world; this is the reason for their alienation.

7 The motif of being uprooted can be traced in his later novels written in the second half of the 1970s (the so-called Washington House series), in the Shan lu [Mountain Path] trilogy (1980) as well as in his latest short stories produced in 1999-2001. In the 1980s Chen was quite well known in Taiwanese society and enjoyed public esteem. He regarded and still regards writing primarily as a moral and political act, rather than an artistic vocation. He was the first to touch taboo subjects publicly in a period when others did not have the courage to talk about such issues (e.g. the relationship between the Chinese and the Taiwanese, issues of environmental protection, the White Terror of the 1950s etc.).* The Guomindang

9 government accused him of subversive activity; he was in prison between 1968 and 1975.

10 After his release, he joined in public life actively. At the time of the xiangtu and bentu movements, he openly declared his Chinese consciousness." It is also a wellknown fact that he is pro-unification and believes that, as a consequence of the shared cultural heritage, Taiwan cannot be separated from China. This conviction of his contrasts strongly with the view of Taiwanese nationalists, who have been exercising political power since 2000. Chen's care for the underprivileged and his anticapitalist attitude is frequently judged as communism; nevertheless, if one reads his works it becomes evident that he is far from being dogmatic Marxist. Even so, in contemporary Taiwan, under the given political and social circumstances, Chen Yingzhen - just as the heroes of his short stories - has become alienated in his homeland. His voice is fading in the Taiwanese literature.

12 Reading his short stories written in the last twenty years, we may remark that he draws his subject matters invariably from Taiwanese history and touches the sorest issues of the latest fifty or sixty years. Although he has never emphasized Taiwanese experience and his works have never been characterised by strong local (xiangtu) colour, Chen persists in making his readers remember Taiwan's past. Why is he so intent on remembering? Does he have anything to say to the present generations, and, if yes, what is his message? These are the questions I attempt to answer through an analysis of his latest works. In Jeffrey Kinkley's opinion, a common feature of Chen Yingzhen's works is that he sympathizes with the underprivileged and those living on the margins of society. In his short stories it is only the setting and conditions (that is, society) that change, human misery is eternal. The different approach to the subject matter results from this fact.

13 According to Kinkley's interpretation, thus we can conclude that the subject matter of Chen's early short stories is oppression, while that of his post-excarceration short stories is dependence. By oppression, Chen usually means the conditions of existence of the poor living in the lower layers of society, weird characters who have been ousted to the periphery. They are oppressed not only in the traditional sense of the word, that is, financially and historically, but existentially as well. The very basis of their life, their right for existence is being questioned, as they are abandoned by the society and system that "have produced" them. Being outsiders in society, they are occasionally orphans and abandoned in the literary sense of the word. Moreover, they are confined for themselves and are unable to communicate