David Der-wei Wang – författare

Whampoa Military Academy was China''s first modern military institution. For decades the "Spirit of Whampoa" was invoked as the highest praise to all Chinese soldiers who guarded their nation heroically. But of all the battles these soldiers have fought, the most challenging one was the civil war that resulted in the "great divide" of China in the mid-twentieth century. In 1949 the Communists exiled a million soldiers and their families to compounds in Taiwan and cut off communication with mainland China for forty years. The Last of the Whampoa Breed tells the stories of the exiles written by their descendants, many of whom have become Taiwan''s most important authors. The book is an important addition to the vastly underrepresented literature of Taiwan in translation and sheds light on the complex relationship between Taiwan and the People''s Republic of China. Western readers will not at first recognize the experiences of these soldiers who were severed from a traditional past only to face unfulfilled promises and uncertain futures. Many of the exiles were doomed to live and die homeless and loveless. Yet these life stories reveal a magnanimous, natural dignity that has transcended prolonged mental suffering. "I Wanted to Go to War" describes the sadly ineffectual, even comic attempts to "recapture the mainland." The old soldier in "Tale of Two Strangers" asks to have his ashes scattered over both the land of his dreams and the island that has sheltered him for forty years. Some of the stories recount efforts to make peace with life in Taiwan, as in "Valley of Hesitation," and the second generation''s struggles to find a place in the native island society as in "The Vanishing Ball" and "In Remembrance of My Buddies from the Military Compound." Narrating the homeland remembered and the homeland in reality, the stories in this book affirm that "we shall not let history be burned to mere ashes."

The first study of colonial Taiwan in English, this volume brings together seventeen essays by leading scholars to construct a comprehensive cultural history of Taiwan under Japanese rule. Contributors from the United States, Japan, and Taiwan explore a number of topics through a variety of theoretical, comparative, and postcolonial perspectives, painting a complex and nuanced portrait of a pivotal time in the formation of Taiwanese national identity.Essays are grouped into four categories: rethinking colonialism and modernity; colonial policy and cultural change; visual culture and literary expressions; and from colonial rule to postcolonial independence. Their unique analysis considers all elements of the Taiwanese colonial experience, concentrating on land surveys and the census; transcolonial coordination; the education and recruitment of the cultural elite; the evolution of print culture and national literature; the effects of subjugation, coercion, discrimination, and governmentality; and the root causes of the ethnic violence that dominated the postcolonial era. The contributors encourage readers to rethink issues concerning history and ethnicity, cultural hegemony and resistance, tradition and modernity, and the romancing of racial identity. Their examination not only provides a singular understanding of Taiwan''s colonial past, but also offers insight into Taiwan''s relationship with China, Japan, and the United States today. Focusing on a crucial period in which the culture and language of Taiwan, China, and Japan became inextricably linked, Taiwan Under Japanese Colonial Rule effectively broadens the critique of colonialism and modernity in East Asia.

Because the island of Taiwan spent the first half of the century as a colony of Japan and the second half in an umbilical relationship to China, its literature challenges basic assumptions about what constitutes a “national literature.” Several contributors directly address the methodological and epistemological issues involved in writing about “Taiwan literature.” Other contributors investigate the cultural and political grounds from which specific genres and literary movements emerged. Still others explore themes of history and memory in Taiwan literature and tropes of space and geography, looking at representations of boundaries as well as the boundary-crossing global flows of commodities and capital. Like Taiwan’s history, modern Taiwan literature is rife with conflicting legacies and impulses. Writing Taiwan reveals a sense of its richness and diversity to English-language readers.

Contributors. Yomi Braester, Sung-sheng Yvonne Chang, Fangming Chen, Lingchei Letty Chen, Chaoyang Liao, Ping-hui Liao, Joyce C. H. Liu, Kim-chu Ng, Carlos Rojas, Xiaobing Tang, Ban Wang, David Der-wei Wang, Gang Gary Xu, Michelle Yeh, Fenghuang Ying