Power, education, fame, money
If Hou hadn’t changed course at 36, it’s likely he still would have produced My Brilliant Dream, Disobedient, and I Just Can’t Help Laughing, but it’s unlikely he would have written his most powerful works—The Hospital, Dangerous Mind, and Souls Embracing—or his The Plum in the Golden Vase, which seems almost to have come from another planet.
Hou has authored realist fiction on four themes—power, education, fame and money. The Hospital is a story about battles for power in the hospital setting in which he used to work. Hou sees it as a study in human pathology.
When readers ask him why the protagonist of the book doesn’t marry, Hou says, “He had to have regrets. I wanted him to be unaware of where his choices were taking him, for him to move towards the accumulation of power while gradually losing all the things he loved most so that he would end up alone in his tower, weeping.”
The Hospital was his first book after leaving medicine, as well as the first after his transition to fiction. Crown Publishing president Ping Shin-tao warned him that its sales weren’t likely to be good, telling him: “Wen-yeong, this book isn’t going to sell as well as your earlier ones. You need to be prepared for that.”
Hou shrugged and said he didn’t care. His work in the hospital had trained him to be passionate but clear-eyed. He just wasn’t concerned about the ups and downs of his book sales.
His second novel, Dangerous Mind, took on an even more sensitive and knotty subject, one most contemporary writers have avoided like the plague: education.
He modeled the book’s protagonist on a real person, a ninth grader preparing for his exams. This young protagonist, Xie Zhengjie, is smart and has a mind of his own, but his grades are all over the place. He is sent out of his math class when his teacher catches him reading the Sanctuary comic in class. Similar punishments are meted out on a daily basis in Taiwan, but no one bothers reporting them. But Hou wanted Xie to come into conflict with the system and push for what he feels is right. This conflict eventually leads Xie to organize a street protest. The book depicts the figures within the educational system who harm students, and their victims too, and sets them on a collision course.
Dangerous Mind continues to be influential nearly 10 years after its publication, and Hou invited a high-school student to the Crown offices for a meeting just last month.
The girl’s mother had posted on Hou’s Facebook page saying that her daughter had read the book as an eighth grader. The mother included the text of the letter her daughter had written to the Minister of Education. “The letter was shocking.” After reading it, Hou decided that he needed to meet with the girl without her mother present and asked an assistant to contact her privately.
During that meeting, Hou largely just listened as the girl spoke. At some point in their conversation, they bonded.
Hou feels that his Facebook relationships with readers are genuine. He doesn’t engage with them for show; he treats them very seriously.
He says he’s also learned from his oldest son, who showed him that children of Taiwan’s professional classes struggle with society’s expectation that they do as well as their parents.
Hou’s oldest son decided early on that he didn’t want to study medicine because he didn’t want to be measured against his parents. But when he did far more poorly than he’d expected to on the university entrance exams, he found himself at loose ends.
But Hou just told him, “That’s great.” And, “It’s good to experience this kind of thing when you’re just 17 or 18.”
What concerned him was whether his son had a sense of what he wanted, and what decision he would make once he did: whether to retake the exam, study at a school he was less enthusiastic about and then try to transfer, or get his military service out of the way then study abroad. Hou assured him that whatever his decision, he’d find him someone to talk to who taken a similar path through life.
After thinking it over, his son chose to get his military service out of the way. True to his word, Hou found a friend for him to talk to who’d completed his military service, gone abroad to study, and was enjoying success in his present career.
“Congratulations! If you hadn’t done so poorly on the entrance exam, you wouldn’t have had this opportunity to go abroad! When you look back on this at the age of 30, you’ll be glad you did.”
Hou has produced a rich body of work that includes everything from humorous essays to short and long-form fiction. His every publication stirs debate, and works such as The Hospital and Dangerous Mind have even been adapted for television.