Forests, Seas, Craftsmanship:

Q: Your work has always focused on fiction. There seems to be relatively little in the way of lyrical prose or belles-lettres drawing on Chinese-­language literary traditions. Why is that?

A: As far as contemporary literature is concerned, it is globally acknowledged that fiction and poetry are the creative genres. Nonfiction prose, on the other hand, lends itself to the expression of personal feelings or the communication of specialist knowledge. Fiction is the heart of my literary pursuit. For a writer, being able to craft fine prose is not in itself very special, because literary styles can be imitated and can be reproduced by AI. But when we transform our affective experiences into fictional stories, we enter a world of creative possibilities. And that’s what makes the process far less predictable.

Q: Since you published your first book, Taiwanese literature has seen major changes, in terms of both its market and its international visibility. Recently, Yang Shuang-zi has won the International Booker Prize. What distinctive traits of Taiwanese literature are worth sharing with the wider world?

A: Taiwanese literature used to be regarded as a branch of Chinese literature. It was only in the 1990s, with the emergence of departments of Taiwanese literature at local universities, that people began to trace its origins. This necessarily means delving into Indigenous literature, works by late-Qing-dynasty intellectuals, and the influences of Japanese literature and world literature during the Japanese colonial era. When we look at history from this perspective, we realize that in terms of its content Taiwanese literature is entirely different from Chinese literature.

For me, Indigenous culture constitutes the very core of Taiwanese literature. This is something that’s completely absent from Chinese literature, a fact not to be gainsaid on the grounds that we share the same language and ancestry. The first distinctive feature is humor. Traditionally, Chinese-language literature boasts fewer humorous or satirical works. The Han Chinese, after all, were an agrarian people who set great store by punctiliousness and diligence, attuning themselves to the seasons. The Indigenous peoples, on the other hand, were mostly hunters who had to rely more or less on luck—hence their being less self-conscious, less prone to meticulous attention. Their relationship with the natural world was also not one of control.

Thanks to the Indigenous Name Rectification Movement, Indigenous literature started to gain prominence in the 1990s. We began to see Indigenous influences in local sports and popular songs, too. In literature, this was manifested in depictions of Taiwanese forests and seas, most of them by Indigenous writers.

Husluman Vava’s novel The Soul of Jade Mountain (2006) is a case in point. Before mountain recreation culture gained traction in Taiwan, people thought there was nothing to write about Jade Mountain (Yushan) because they failed to see any cultural or moral relationship between mountain climbers and mountains. There was only a sense of conquest and adventure. As for the sea, this was a terrible, unknown space: why should anyone write about it? But we now have a lot of works devoted to these realms, which suggests that Taiwanese culture is moving in these two directions.

The second feature is the respect for artisanship enshrined in Japanese culture. This is a legacy of Taiwan’s colonial past, but it remained largely out of sight for quite some time. It was around 2000 that we began to see a revival of this tradition of ­artisanal devotion. Up until then, intellectuals had been ­observing the world from a top-down perspective, but people were starting to realize that a craftsperson’s philosophy of life could be even more meaningful than that of a scholar. Examples include Lin Li-chin’s Working People (2017), Lin Kai-lun’s Fishmongering: A Memoir (2022), and many other prose works drawing on various artisanal insights. When people from all walks of life are given their voice, the local prose scene becomes richer and more diverse.

Q: As you suggested just now, your own writing clearly bears the imprint of Indigenous culture. On various occasions, you have even been mistaken for an Indigenous writer. This is very interesting. Can you tell us why?

A: At first, it was actually because of my appearance. Also, I’ve spent 24 years in Hualien, where it’s impossible to avoid meeting Indigenous people.

I was a teenager in the 1980s. I went to university in the 1990s, and it was then that I began my life as an intellectual. I’ve always counted myself lucky to have lived through those decades. During the Indigenous Name Rectification Movement, I saw how the Indigenous peoples reclaimed their sense of dignity, how singers and basketball players re-­embraced their Indigenous names, how artists began to welcome Indigenous elements into their works, and how cheerleaders supporting Indigenous athletes sang songs from the athletes’ homelands. In terms of literary creation, their destinies and the forests and seas they depict furnish much more expansive subject matter than the perpetually recurring themes of grandparents or former lovers.

I had already started to pay attention to nature even before I relocated to Hualien. When I moved there, I found a new kind of creative soil, one that allowed me to be both an insider and an outsider at the same time. From the perspective of Indigenous culture, writing about butterflies isn’t something of great import, as the subject has relatively little to do with Indigenous ways of life. But once connections have been made, even these scientific materials will percolate through their culture. During my first ten years in Hualien, I was also involved with the Indigenous Homeland Reconstruction Foundation. As an outsider, to some extent I could sense the historical pressures they were facing.

Q: Can you tell us about your next writing projects?

A: For my next book, I want to explore how emotions become hollowed out and distorted when people live extraordinarily long lives. In doing so, I wish to reconstruct ethical systems. Filial piety is a core value for families in the Han Chinese cultural sphere. It’s so fundamental that no one dares challenge it. But whereas many people in the past lived only into their 50s or 60s, today we may have to endure more than 20 years of physical decline. This grows out of the complex feelings I have lived with through years of caring for my own family.

I also want to write about genetic engineering, as well as issues related to the universe, space travel, and interspecies relations. It’s just that science fiction today has to evolve with the times. It has moved beyond the 1970s and 1980s, when landing on Mars was a popular theme.