Ke Ching-ming, a professor of Chi-nese at National Taiwan University, assumed the directorship of the NTU Publishing Center half a year ago. He put the entire collection of British publishing company Penguin Books' Western classics on display at the publishing center next to the NTU library, selling each book for NT$70. His hope was that students would fall in love with novels and give full rein to their imaginations.
For Ke Ching-ming, it is a fact of life that there are increasingly fewer students today who read literary classics. A few years ago, his son, now serving in the military, was in high school and told him that his teacher did not permit students to read novels. Ke Ching-ming was mortified when he heard this. He states that faced with the enormous pressure of school responsibilities, many junior high and high school teachers only hope or recommend their students read "Chicken Soup for the Soul" type essays from authors such as Liu Yong or Yu Chiu-yu. However, this type of reading is not enough in Ke's opinion.
Ke Ching-ming points out that master humorist Lin Yu-tang once said that between Aesop's Fables and Alice in Wonderland, he prefers Alice in Wonderland because one should not have to immediately think about the moral of the story after reading. Rather, one should be able to enjoy giving free rein to one's imagination. Alice in Wonderland is the kind of story that builds every situation upon a "what if" scenario. The little girl in the story is able to try out what it is like to become gigantic, and then tiny, and to imagine what sort of adventures and different experiences she would face.
The threat of television
"This loss of readers of literature is not only occurring in Taiwan," says Ke Ching-ming. When he went to Harvard University for research in 1991, Ke met a scholar from the Soviet Union who taught a course on "Literature and Film." This professor stated that, due to the climatic conditions in Russia, there are a few months during the year in which the entire land is covered with snow and ice and there is no way to travel anywhere. To stave off boredom during the winter months, Russian families would read aloud classic literary works together. This professor from the Soviet Union discovered upon arriving in the United States that the means by which American youths obtain information and understanding of the world has already changed from text to video images.
In Ke Ching-ming's view, the reasons for the loss of readers are complex perhaps, but it is certain that once television infiltrated the homes of regular families, the attention span of the younger generation was "stolen" away.
Ke Ching-ming, who was born in 1947, states that there was television in Taiwan only when he was ten years old or so. As a third-grader, his means of knowing more about the world around him was reading books and listening to the radio. However, after televisions became commonplace, "the television became every child's babysitter." The collective memory of his fourth- and fifth-grade years was the Green Oil commercials. Ke Ching-ming feels that for those who grew up since childhood in the world and age of constant high-volume broadcast images, their thinking ability is definitely not the same.
Apart from the deep and far-reaching effects that video images have on children of this age, "the conversion from reading novels to reading comic books is also a dividing point between the two generations. This generation of youths reads comic books in the same way in which they watch the cut scenes of a movie." Ke Ching-ming points out that Tsai Chi-chung's "Zhuangzi" and "Laozi" comic books are a great contribution because many e-generation youths read these comic books and then go to the original text of Laozi and Zhuangzi. As for the Japanese, their method of drawing comic books involves infusing them with great depth. Ke Ching-ming would actually allow his son, who loves to watch movies, to purchase novel adaptations of movies. "Because there are many different, undetermined meanings in moving images," he says. "They can only be nailed down through language and text."
Assigning meaning through text
"People who like to brainwash themselves with images have a harder time with deep introspection and thought because they cannot really convert language into text," says Ke Ching-ming. If the educational system also does not provide abundant reading materials that stimulate the imagination, then the consequences would be unthinkable.
In response to the computerized grading of exams, Ke Ching-ming told the College Entrance Exam Center that this practice was harmful to children. He also heard that currently junior high school Basic Competency Tests would not test composition. Ke Ching-ming feels that this practice would severely hurt the liberal arts because a student's writing ability is a test of his abilities to organize and integrate his thoughts. If experiences cannot be integrated through language and text, all that remains are shattered memories.
Although the younger generation in America has also lived in a world of video images since childhood, the American educational methods are still a lot more lively. Ke Ching-ming's son had accompanied his father to the United States and enrolled in a local elementary school. Their social studies homework assignment involved him going to the library, bringing over 20 books back home, and telling the story of Northern Europe's Vikings through poems or picture drawings. "According to the theories of the behavioral science field of psychology, combining reading and happy experiences is a form of encouragement," Ke says. "Combining reading with painful experiences is hell."
Going commercial?
Besides the stealing away of readers by video images, the publishing industry has also become increasingly capitalistic and its selling methods over-commercialized. This is also the reason behind some of the loss of readers. Ke Ching-ming explains that in a capitalist society, shelf space is extremely valuable and expensive, so the costs of running a bookstore can be high. The average person's purchasing habits of books is very drawn out, unlike at a McDonalds fast food restaurant where one enters and immediately makes an order and pays. Many bookstore customers take a very long time in browsing, flipping through various books, and will only possibly purchase a single book after using up a long period of time.
The director of the Elite Books Publishing Company, Yin Ti, once told Ke Ching-ming that it seems like the publishing industry is under the control of Hollywood's Big Eight film studios. The release of a book is like the release of a movie. If a book does not sell well for the first or second week, then it is taken off the shelf and returned. Ke Ching-ming states that due to the fact that there are too many books, even if some books can be promoted, a large majority of them will be returned before readers ever get a chance to see them.
"Books should be 'durable' goods. They must be slowly digested." Upon saying this, Ke Ching-ming draws out an exquisitely bound volume of The Harvard Classics from the bookshelf in his study. Inside it is a collection of classic literary selections ranging from the ancient Greeks all the way to modern day authors.
In New York in 1991, Ke Ching-ming was unexpectedly delighted to be able to purchase a copy of Lin Yu-tang's The Importance of Living, which was published in 1937. He drew this book out of the bookshelf in his study and turned to the page containing the copyright information. "This book was published in 1937, and went through twenty printings by 1939," he says. "You can tell that it was read by a lot of people."
"The Importance of Living talks about many interesting subjects, such as Confucius and Mencius, Laozi and Zhuangzi, Zi Si, Tao Yuanming, and the thinking of others who had a passion for life as well as Christianity and the Greeks' view of life." This is a classic that Ke Ching-ming will pick up and flip through from time to time.
"In the different stages of our lives, we need different kinds of good friends," says Ke. "The advantage of books lies in their abundance." Ke Ching-ming states that no matter what kind of person you are, you can always find a book close to your heart that can accompany you for life.
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Ke Ching-ming, director of the National Taiwan University publishing center, brought classic Western novels into the center, hoping that students will develop a fondness for literature.
