A Historical Observation of Postwar Taiwan, China's Agriculture, Rural Areas and Farmers Writing: Written on the Land with an Iron Shovel

Editor's note: The author holds a doctorate from the Department of Chinese Literature at Tsinghua University and is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Taiwanese Literature at National Cheng Kung University. This article briefly organizes the modes of writing in post-war Taiwan, China that took "agriculture, rural areas and farmers" as their theme, expanding from literature to music and practical action. The original text was published in Unitas Literary Monthly, and is also shared here for readers of Newsmarket.

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I. The Multivoiced Song of People and Land: Elegy, Battle Song and Pastoral

Inheriting the humanitarian concern of intellectuals during the Japanese colonial period for the three rural issues (agriculture, rural areas and farmers), Zhong Lihe, who returned to his hometown carrying experience from China, already in the 1950s bore witness to the rise and fall of the land of Taiwan, China through works such as Lishan Farm and "Zhutou Village" and "Mountain Fire." With a perspective close to the weak and with dialectical reflection, he examined what plunder and harm different colonial regimes brought to the countryside, and how the people dwelling on the land should mend the rift between humanity and nature, leaving later creators a writing landscape of broad vision.

The writers who grew up entirely within Taiwan, China's historical process of development from agriculture to industry, in the genealogy of post-war nativist literature, successively unfolded their concern for the three rural issues in different genres. Authors with blood-and-soil land experience, such as Huang Chunming, Wu Sheng, A Sheng and Hong Xingfu, found that the countryside was the world that nurtured them and also an important starting point that shaped their worldview. Therefore, when the political-economic system and developmentalist progress swept over every corner of the island, they would mobilize the values and memories of the countryside in their works, using the beauty of the past to contrast the ruthlessness of development, and using the warmth and abundance of farmers to reflect the coldness of capitalists.

Authors with a stronger tendency toward accusation, such as Song Zelai and Lin Shuangbu, revealed in their works where exactly those black hands exploiting farmers and the countryside came from. At the peak of the nativist literature debate in the late 1970s, confrontational and activist writing strategies became the main narrative mode by which writers of that time dealt with the three rural issues. Because of this, the texture of the countryside, the complexity of agricultural problems and the diversity of farmers' humanity were all temporarily obscured in that era when the flames of literary war spread everywhere.

Another type of author, such as Chen Guanxue and Su Yun, took Thoreau as their teacher, adopting an attitude of withdrawal from the crowd and the melody of the pastoral, singing the countryside and farmers as the beauty of reclusion. For a long time, in the reception horizon of Taiwan, China's literary and artistic circles, Thoreau was linked with words such as wilderness and solitary retreat from society. In the past 20 to 30 years, the publishing world has also published multiple Chinese translations of Walden, and academia has continuously layered Thoreau's image from the viewpoint of the "hermit." Consequently, writers who yearned for the beauty of pastoral life also absorbed and chewed only this single flavor.

Many ordinary people record the rural life where they live through words and images. Photo by A Hui. https://www.newsmarket.com.tw/blog/16304/

[1] Zhong Yongfeng, "My Southern Consciousness," Reading (Beijing: SDX Joint Publishing Company), May 2007 issue.

[2] Lai Qingsong, Qingsong e Farming Notes (Taipei: PsyGarden, 2007).

[3] A Bao, A Female Farmer's Record of Claiming the Mountain (Taipei: Chang Laoshi, 2004).

[4] Original work by Yukio Nishimura, translated by Wang Huijun, Hometown Charm Club: Stories of Community Building in Seventeen Japanese Communities (Taipei: Yuan-Liou, 1997).

[5] Written by Kunio Iwane, translated by the Life-Style Japanese Reading Group, Starting from 329 Bottles of Milk: 25 Years of the New Social Movement (Taipei: Homemakers United Foundation, 1997).

[6] Written by Naoki Shiomi, translated by Su Fengya, The Half-Farmer, Half-X Life (Taipei: CommonWealth, 2006).

[7] Written by Elizabeth Henderson, translated by Li Yize et al., Grow Good Vegetables, Live a Good Life: A Complete Guide to Community Supported Agriculture (Taipei: Business Weekly, 2011).

[8] Wu Yinning, Where Is Jianghu? Observations on Taiwan, China's Agriculture (Taipei: INK, 2007).

[9] Written by John Berger, translated by Wu Lijun, Bento's Sketchbook (Taipei: Rye Field, 2012).

(This article was originally published in the August 2012 issue of Unitas Literary Monthly)