Chiang Wen-yu graduated from National Taiwan University's foreign languages department and earned a doctorate in linguistics at the University of Delaware. Now she teaches at NTU, both in her old department and the graduate program in linguistics. Her research focuses on phonology, structural linguistics and sociolinguistics, but she is also very interested women's studies.

She has recently stepped down as chairwoman of the Taipei Association for the Promotion of Women's Rights and now is just a member of its board of directors. The association works toward getting sexual equality to take root here in Taiwan. It has, for instance, educated youngsters about sexual equality and proposed that day-care policies be adopted by the government, and Chiang has been a behind-the-scenes force in getting the association to publish two recent books: Grandmothers' Tales and Disappearing Taiwanese Grandmothers.

Q: Most of the works in Grandmothers' Tales were winning submissions in a writing contest sponsored by your association. Please tell us, what were the standards for selecting these articles? They are divided into various categories, such as "women adopted as children by their future in-laws," "lives of constant toil," "the dignified and powerful," etc., but certain general themes including dependence on men, endurance of great hardship, and strength and perseverance keep cropping up. The similarities are striking. What were your considerations for making these categories?

The representative and the unusual

A: Ninety-six essays were submitted to the competition, and there were 16 winners. As a basic criterion, the judges were looking for representative stories through which one could see the face of the era.

Stories of remarkable lives were also sought. There were some women who were very special, who had lives that were very different from the norm, such as Chen Weng Shih-hsia, the "grandmother of democracy." Now in her nineties, Chen has written about her life of unbound feet and free love. And Yang Tsui, whose grandfather was the writer Yang Kuei, writes about her grandmother, the "revolutionary woman warrior" Ye-tao.

By dividing the grandmothers in Taiwan into ethnic categories, we can see that the aboriginal grandmothers and the grandmothers who came from Japan when it ruled Taiwan are quite different from Han Chinese grandmothers, and so we created separate chapters for them. For instance, "Years at the Loom" describes the one traditional occupation of Atayal women: weaving.

Some people argue that using these categories downplays the rich individuality of these grandmothers' lives, and in fact these categories are all a little overlapping. For instance, many of the women who were adopted by their future in-laws as young children also passed "lives of constant toil" or "shared their husband with other women." There are many possible ways to organize these essays. As for the last two essays, about "grandmothers who got a new lease on life," there is much symbolic meaning in their stories, in how they let go of the past and marched boldly into their futures. I want to offer some hope.

Outer reality vs. inner feeling

Q: Disappearing Taiwanese Grandmothers is oral history, and makes use of first-person narration. How did you select the people to be interviewed? What was representative about them?

A: The interviews were conducted and compiled by Tseng Chiu-mei, a graduate student in history at National Central University. She found most of the women she interviewed through her mother. The essay "The Mother Who Took Her Daughter to Be Adopted" is about her own mother. Tseng Chiu-mei was almost given to another family herself. Hence I think that she was a very motivated interviewer. Later, she wrote her own thesis on "Young Adopted Brides-to-Be of the Taoyuan-Nankan Area."

One grandmother called to say that her life had been even harder than the life of A-hsin, (the lead character of a television drama) and hoped that we would make a record of it. She was the oldest child in her family, and from a young age she assumed responsibility for many of the household chores, and she was often beaten by her mother. From her story we can learn that although most people feel that mothers and daughters are close, under the pressures of patriarchal society, mothers would often take out their anger on their daughters.

This book introduces some grandmothers who were out of the ordinary, such as the Hakka poetess Tu Pan Fang-ko. And there is Chuang Cheng-hua, whose family suffered from political oppression. Her father was a doctor in Tainan who was arrested during the February 28 incident and died in custody. Her life was completely transformed as a result.

Taken as a whole, this was the first time we did oral history, and the samples taken couldn't help but be restricted by the experiences of the interviewer, but from working on this book we have gained fact-gathering skills and contacts.

Making women's history

Q: These two books not only allow the long-ignored women of the generations that preceded us to stand up and speak their minds; they also allow us to view the changes that were going on at the time. It's almost like turning male-directed "history" into female-directed "herstory."

A: History was originally the public realm of emperors, generals and ministers, but in the years since the repeal of martial law it has been fashionable for common folk to write their memoirs, and there is already a blurring of the line between life history and government history. The truth is that history itself is a construct, accumulations of what filters through the perspectives of people given the right to interpret the past. A complete history, besides having facts, like "who, what, when and where," also has a side of emotional reflections and inner thoughts which is brought more fully into play in women's history.

Now women are standing up to speak their minds and tell their own stories, and we are beginning to witness a unique historical perspective that belongs to them. Their perspective is quite different from men's. For instance, in recording oral history about the February 28 incident, people previously put the stress on external facts, such as witnesses who saw people being tortured, etc. Now the focus has turned to the suffering imposed by the entire process and how the experience affected people inside. This is a change in historical perspective.

Of course, the women's movement doesn't want to exclude men. It's just that during the transitional period, we want first to accumulate enough women's experiences. Then later by adding the perspective of men, we can create a complete history.

Matters of the heart

Q: In the preface you mention that many of the happiest memories of your life were from being raised by your grandmother for several years when you were small. Could you speak about how your grandmother has influenced you?

A: I'm glad you asked that question, because this is very important to me. When I was little, because my parents were busy, I was sent to my grandmother's house, and I lived there from when I was two until I enrolled at elementary school.

My grandmother's own family background was quite well off, but because her parents had sexist attitudes, she went no further in her studies than grade school. In fact, my grandmother was very intelligent and decisive. She would often sigh and say, "Being a woman is useless," by which she meant that if she were a man, she would have definitely achieved more than just being a housewife. This made a big impression on me. She encouraged me to get a higher education, so I could hold my head high and not be condemned to her fate.

So I was very motivated to edit Grandmothers' Tales, and I was full of regrets about my grandmother. I felt that the women of the older generation have much in their hearts that has never been described. These grandmothers are in fact very intelligent, but they haven't, like men, had the chance to make their own decisions.

From start to finish these books took two years to prepare, but if they are able to spark interest in researching women's history, then it makes all the effort worthwhile. I think that this is the most meaningful thing I've done in my whole life.

Q: It must be very gratifying for your grandmother to see what you've accomplished.

A: She says I'm the grandchild she's most proud of [Chiang laughs]. It's too bad that when I was editing Grandmothers' Tales I didn't have any time to write an essay myself. I hope that I will have time to put together the story of my own grandmother's life.

Q: Your area of specialty is linguistics. What moved you to get involved with the women's movement?

A: Most people have a stereotyped view of linguistics as being very dry. But in fact there are two kinds of linguistics. One discusses the structure of language, and is more and more scientific. The other is sociolinguistics: it discusses how language differs as it is used by people of different genders, classes, social groups and ages, and it looks at how language connects to education, culture and the media.

I am very concerned about the languages of disadvantaged peoples. After coming back from the United States, I wrote several papers about Taiwanese aborigines, and I was asked to be a faculty advisor for various student groups. Then the secretary-general of the Women's Rights Association asked me to serve as chairwoman. At the beginning I hesitated. I was pregnant, and I had bad morning sickness. But I truly felt that over the course of their lives, women really suffer quite a lot, and I had ideals that I thought I should act upon, so I agreed.

Passing along women's experience

Of course the decision to accept the post was the result of life experiences over many years. Since I was very small, I felt deeply how this society favors men over women, boys over girls. Teachers always have a double standard about their students. When I was in junior high, I wasn't very happy. I didn't want to be a girl and even wanted to change my sex. Looking back, I think it was the result of an internal struggle caused by sexist oppression. And I was only able to obtain my doctorate in linguistics after much struggle and compromise with my father. He didn't want me to continue my studies but rather hoped that I would quickly get married. It was my mother, who has experienced unhappiness from having a lower educational level than my father, who encouraged me to persist.

When I see how my students today in the foreign literature department have been enlightened by feminism, it gives me high hopes for them and the younger generation as a whole.

Q: What does the association have planned for the future. Will it continue to sponsor "grandmothers' tales" writing competitions?

A: Having finished the grandmothers' tales competition, we are now planning a "mothers' tales" writing competition. I have discovered something interesting: Many people are embarrassed to speak about their mothers. Because the experiences are too close, there are negative things that they are not willing to write about. But when asked to write about a grandmother, everyone becomes very excited. In one respect it's because they want to learn more about that generation, and it's also that there's a sense of beauty that comes with distance.

Making women's oral history

We will continue to make "oral history," focusing on special themes, such as changing femininity, mainlander grandmothers, political figures, etc.

From another angle, if you only describe the outside reality, the reader may feel that all of the stories are more or less the same. Hence, you've got to take it a step farther to get the person's inner thoughts and feelings, such as her views of marriage, her relationship with her husband, and even her views about love and sex that she normally wouldn't talk about. Of course, this isn't easy; it's the most difficult part of putting together history. Although those grandmothers weren't the "liberated" women of today, inside they have their own imaginings. I'm curious what they are.

Q: From a sociolinguistic standpoint, what are the characteristics of these women?

A: There are several special sociolinguistic characteristics about the way women speak, including avoiding conflict and compromising easily. Hence, if they have a different opinion than an interviewer, they are liable hold back and not openly disagree. The older generation of women are particularly modest, and sometimes you've got to prod them into talking about their positive sides. I've also discovered that you've got to avoid the presence of male family members when doing oral history. Otherwise, they'll always be butting in, and the women being interviewed will always be asking for their opinions.

Sometimes, interviewees will hold back or ask that the interviewer not make a record of some things. This is always a problem when making oral history: everyone wants to show the good and hide the bad. A way of dealing with this problem is to use a pseudonym. If we want to construct women's history, there's nothing wrong with using an alias to get interviewees to speak about their true feelings.

Promoting welfare for elderly women

Q: The tragic history of these women is often too much to bear. Apart from reading their sad tales, what can we do that will bring positive results?

A: In the past if we talked about grandmothers' suffering, people wouldn't necessarily know what we meant. Now these stories are concrete evidence, and they can be used as a reference for making policy about elderly women.

For example, there are some grandmothers who gain status within the family by taking care of grandchildren. But the truth is that taking care of children is hard work, and a great strain on their health. If we can provide adequate day-care facilities, we can allow them to get out of their houses, giving them chances to participate in community activities or go to a university for the elderly. The Association for the Promotion of Women's Rights has already applied to establish a university for the elderly in the Women's Service Center of Tachih. Other welfare polices for women include improving nursing homes and establishing an overall system for old-age pensions.

Q: Even if binding feet or the custom of giving away girls to the families of their future husbands aren't likely to be revived, there still many problems regarding sexual inequality. How should the women's rights movement look at the past to plan for the future?

A: Today a lot of people feel that the women's rights movement is at high tide, and that there is already equality. But this is a mistaken impression, because there are still many areas where sexual equality is a long way off, including the right to work, sexual harassment in the workplace, pay, opportunities for higher education, and sexist attitudes in textbooks. What's more, though women have entered the work force, they still shoulder the burden of housework, and this double duty is exhausting.

Old women are the disadvantaged among disadvantaged, and the Women's Rights Association will continue to be concerned about their welfare. The "grandmothers' tales" books represent just one aspect of this concern.