Southeast Asia Literature Roundtable

Fang Hui-chen

A former columnist for Next, a weekly magazine, and currently senior reporter for the non-profit online magazine The Reporter. Her published works include two volumes of essays, One-way Street and Little Dust, and a collection of interviews, A Reporter Like Me, that figured among Mirror Media Weekly’s Top Ten Books. Her Strawberry and Ashes won Chiuko Publishing’s 2016 Essay Award.

Indonesian wrtier Ayu ­Utami

Bao Ninh

His first novel, The Sorrow of War, debuted in Vietnam in 1990, and the English edition won the UK-based Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 1994. A Chinese version has been published in Taiwan. His other works include The Camp of Seven Dwarves, A Marker on the Side of the Boat, and Rambling While Stuck in Traffic.

Indonesian wrtier Ayu ­Utami

Ayu Utami

A journalist in Indonesia during the period of military rule, her debut novel -Saman—launched just a few weeks before the fall of Suharto in 1998—is considered to have played an important role in the movement for political change (Reformasi) in her country, and won the Jakarta Arts Council’s award for Best Novel that year. She also penned the -theater script for Susila’s Trial.

Vietnamese author Bao Ninh

Perceptions of Taiwan

Vietnamese author Bao Ninh

Taiwan Panorama: Can you share with us your impressions of Taiwan?

Bao Ninh: Since I arrived in Taiwan, I’ve encountered many rather modern sights. In this respect, it’s not inferior to Japan. What’s especially valuable is that things here retain a certain air of antiquity, like the National Palace Museum. Taiwan gives me a sense of both the ancient and the contemporary, Chinese and foreign. Although the Taiwanese and I speak different languages, I feel kindness and warmth.

Ayu Utami: This is my first visit, and my feeling is that Taiwan is very friendly, liberal and pleasant. There’s no sense of being excluded. When I arrived at Tai­pei Main Station and saw Indonesian migrant workers chatting with their friends, it struck me: Taiwan is a place that could easily win the affection of foreigners.    

Fang Hui-chen: I’d like to say something about my relationship with Southeast Asia. My father is a Chinese-­Indonesian who remained in Taiwan after he began his studies here in 1960. When I completed elementary school, he considered moving the family back to Indonesia. I often reflect on how, if we had really relocated, I might be a very different person today.

Vietnamese author Bao Ninh

Writers’ inspiration: Countries in chaos

Taiwan Panorama invited two authors, Bao Ninh from Vietnam and Ayu ­Utami from Indonesia, to take part in a dialogue with Taiwanese writer Fang Hui-chen at the 2018 Southeast Asian Literature Forum.

Taiwan Panorama: Can you tell us what impact the state of your homeland had on your first book?

Bao Ninh: The day I was born in 1952, the French attacked our village. I came into the world amidst the sound of bombs exploding, my mother told me. From 1969 I served in the 27th Youth Brigade of the People’s Army of Vietnam. I returned to civil­ian life in 1975, one of just ten to survive the war out of a force of more than 500.
The war was over. We were the victorious side, but undergoing six years of war almost demolished me. Each day brought new nightmares; even my parents feared me. I was keen to forget the war, but it refused to release its grip on me. I was not good with words and could not express the pain deep in my heart. It took me a decade to gather the courage to put The Sorrow of War down on paper. War wasn’t my subject; I was writing for the sake of peace.

Ayu Utami: I was a journalist near the end of the rule of Indo­nesia’s strongman, President Suharto. To resist the military regime’s clampdown on speech, which demanded that only pro-government news be published, my friends and I established the Alliance of Independent Journalists.
My country underwent colonization by the Netherlands and Japan, and the dictatorship of Su­harto’s junta. The voices of many victims who were politically persecuted and whose human rights were trampled upon were long disregarded. When I finally realized that the medium of news reporting could not capture the deep sense of injustice suffered by victims, I switched to writing a novel. After my Saman was published in 1998, many female writers and activist-authors followed suit, which confirms the wisdom of the phrase, “When the press is muted, literature finds its voice.”   

Fang Hui-chen: I very much agree that attaining freedom of the press requires taking bold risks.
I’d like to respond to Ayu’s story. I recently inter­viewed ­Zhang Kun­shan, the owner of Hai­wang Printing House, a firm that handled underground dang­wai publications under martial law. Nowadays everyone knows that in the eighties, due to the ban on opposition publications, staff often had to race to remove newly printed matter, such as a 10,000-copy special edition of Progress magazine on the February 28 Incident, before the Taiwan Garrison Command could confiscate it. Hai­wang planned to continue printing the special edition, so to avoid inspection by the garrison command, printing factory staff transported the magazines to a funeral home, or hid them in a pigsty near Tai­pei’s Liu­zhangli—ghosts and stink be damned! This is the history behind Taiwan’s battle for freedom of the press. Ayu is very similar to those forebears of ours.
As for my first book, One-Way Street, it was inspired by the spirit of Taiwan’s rising tide of bold bloggers.

(left to right) Indonesian writer Ayu Utami, Taiwanese writer Fang Hui-chen and Vietnamese writer Bao Ninh. (venue courtesy of Thinker's Theater, photo by Chuang Kung-ju)

Distinct societies, similar transformations

Taiwan Panorama: Have recent social changes in your country impacted your writing plans?

Bao Ninh: In recent years, Vietnam has undergone increasingly quicker and more radical change. On the one hand, development drives economic prosperity; but it also brings problems such as changing mores, urban chaos and a breakdown in social order. From a writer’s point of view, I feel rather sad.    

Fang Hui-chen: Taiwanese society has also changed greatly. My first job ever was as a feature writer for Next, a weekly magazine. During my four years there, Taiwan’s media environment underwent drastic changes, such as the increasing influence of investors, paid product placement within news, and blind pursuit of scandal and higher click-through rates. This has been followed by the efforts of mainland Chinese capitalists to gain entry to the Taiwanese media scene via investment. My new book, A Journalist Like Me, chronicles this trans­formation.

Ayu Utami: In recent years, Indonesia has experienced freedom of the press, but nowadays it may be too free. The media is flooded with fake news items, manipulated by certain ethnic groups or religious figures that select solely the news they wish to hear, while ignoring objective facts. This “autocratic” atmosphere is altering the nature of Indonesia’s formerly tolerant society. 
So I now believe that freedom of the press does not suffice; people must acquire the “freedom to think.” For my next project, I intend to write a book around the theme of “critical spiritualism,” in the hopes that Indonesia will become a more inclusive and tolerant society.

Writers reveal their favorites

Bao Ninh and Ayu Utami: We would like to know more about Taiwan. Could Fang Hui-chen recommend some books that might be helpful in understanding Taiwanese literature and ­history?

Fang Hui-chen: I’d recommend five books: The Great Flowing River: A Memoir of China, from Manchuria to Taiwan by Chi Pang-yuan; The Steelyard by Lai Ho, the father of Taiwanese literature; Collection of Short Stories by Lü Ho-jo; Taipei People by Kenneth ­Hsien-yung Pai; and Taste of Apples by ­Huang Chun-ming.

Bao Ninh: Two contemporary Vietnamese prose writers worthy of recommendation are ­Nguyen Huy ­Thiep and ­Nguyen Binh ­Phuong. A representative poet would be ­Nguyen Du [1765-1820]. For readers who are keen to delve further into traditional Vietnamese culture, I recom­mend his epic poem Truyen Kieu.

Ayu Utami: Indonesian works I’d like to recommend include Letters of a Javanese Princess by Raden Ad­jeng Kar­tini, a women’s rights activist born into an aristocratic family in the then Dutch East Indies; This Earth of Mankind by Pra­moedya ­Ananta Toer; Indonesia: Social and Cultural Revolution by Sutan Tak­dir Alis­jah­bana; Ah­mad To­hari’s The Dancer; and “Me,” a poem by Chairil Anwar.