Liao Hui-ying, the winner of the 29th Wu San Lien Award for prose fiction in 2006, was born in Taichung County's Fengyuan City in 1948. Her father was a mechanical engineer who graduated from the Japanese-era Taihoku School of Industry (now National Taipei University of Technology) and her mother was the cherished youngest daughter of a doctor of Western medicine. Everyone thought her parents were a perfect match, but neither one of them had a knack for running household finances. They fell into poverty, and their marriage became a prison for every member of the family.

"Every time my father got paid, an argument broke out in our household," she says. "I figured out from hearing my mom cursing that the little cash in the pay envelope was what was left over after advances were deducted. It wouldn't even cover half the bills." In an autobiographical piece, Liao wrote that sometimes her father would passively accept her mother's rage, knowing he was wrong, but other times, he couldn't control himself. He'd hit her with his fists.

Liao's No Road Home, which won the eighth annual United Daily News prize for literature in 1983, provoked frank discussion of social mores with its depiction of hopelessness and the struggle for dignity in the face of an extramarital affair.

"Child labor"

Her father was impulsive and immature by nature, but he managed to lay the foundations for Liao's future literary endeavors. Though the family was poor, her father always managed to buy books for his children. He'd buy copies of Children's Paradise and New Classmate for her, and Eastern Youth and Classmate for her brother. They would also go out to the movies as a family. She remembers those as the happiest times of her childhood.

Her father was from an educated family. He could speak English and Japanese, and painted in oil and watercolors. He'd often read bedtime stories to her in his clear and resonant voice. He'd read Brothers Grimm fairy tales, The Arabian Nights, and old Chinese stories like those from Water Margin and Journey to the West or about Judge Bao. Reflecting on her childhood, Liao says, "Actually, my father was bright and sensitive. Our family had an artistic atmosphere. If only they hadn't married so young and had had more life experience first, maybe things would have been different!" While her father was rash and irresponsible, her mother was strong and opinionated, and stirred up a different mix of love and hate in Liao.

Her mother was the little princess of a rich family who from an early age always had at least two adopted sisters around answering to her. Though she had studied in Japan and seen something of the world, she still held the traditional bias against daughters and for sons. Also, since she'd always been spoiled, she couldn't do any type of housework, and Liao had to fill in for her. From the age of six, Liao had to do everything from helping her brother go to the bathroom to cooking meals.

"Starting in second grade, I'd spend half the day studying and the other half doing 'child labor,'" Liao says. "My mom never cared for me. She'd always say that girls' future was putting food on the table for the husbands they depend on, and that the earlier I learned to do housework the better." With a hint of regret in her voice, she says, "I was never loved as a child. My mother never even held me."

A bright, carefree exterior belied a troubled soul with nowhere to turn. This picture was taken in front of National Taiwan University's Fu Memorial Bell in 1971.

Lost hope

When she was nine years old, the family moved to Taipei, and Liao started to show her gift for writing. In the third grade she took first place in a school-wide essay contest. She was admitted to a junior high school that was affiliated with Taipei's prestigious First High School for Girls. In addition to all the homework she had to do, she also had to keep the house in order after school. During vacations she went to summer school and did the laundry for the whole family of eight by hand. She also did the groceries, started the coal stove, cooked all three meals, and tended to the chickens.

She was in the prime of her youth but was treated like a servant--she started to suspect that she was adopted, and that that was the reason her mother would tell people she was ugly and slap her around at times. Looking at her blistered hands, she'd ask herself, "Could it really be like this for the rest of my life?" Exhausted from all the household chores and racked by suspicion she was adopted, she lost hope in life and even wanted to commit suicide.

"I didn't end up on a dead-end path as a teenager," she says. "Rather, I ended up having a clearer understanding of life. My mother's strictness made me strong and tenacious, and also made me start to think about gender issues." She used the winter and summer breaks during her three years of junior high to read works of Chinese and foreign literature like Dream of the Red Chamber, Journey to the West, The Brothers Karamazov, All Quiet on the Western Front, and Moby Dick. She also started submitting her own writing to newspaper supplements.

The first article she submitted to the now-defunct Great China Evening News was accepted, so she kept writing. Afraid her classmates would find out, she used a different pen name each time. Later she was admitted to National Taiwan University's Chinese department, and started seeing a lot of films. Those films, as well as poetry classes by renowned professors of the department such as Cheng Chien's on classical poetry, Yeh Chia-ying's on the Tang-Dynasty poet Du Fu (712-770), and Yu Ta-kang's on Tang poet Li Shangyin (c. 810-858), helped her find her aesthetic sense.

Liao Hui-ying not only opened the door for feminist literature in Taiwan in the 1990s, she also challenged the gender imbalance in Taiwanese society.

Causing an uproar

During vacations from high school and college, Liao managed to write two or three pieces a year. As she had always used pen names, no one realized how much she had already published in her youth when she began to make a name for herself. On the eve of graduating from college, she realized that with four siblings still in school she'd have to help out. Her father's salary was still very low, and from her years of experience getting published she knew it would be impossible to make a living at writing. She'd have to give it up.

After graduation, she reluctantly took a temporary position at a bank that her father arranged for her through an acquaintance. Then she took a job at an advertising firm, where she worked her way up from an entry-level position to vice president in ten years. She took the advertising world by storm, but she felt further and further away from writing.

She married and then at the age of 34 became pregnant. She quit her job to stay home while expecting, and one day as she sat around bored she noticed an ad in the China Times announcing their fifth annual literature contest. It was May 1982, and there were only 22 days until the deadline. After seeing the announcement, she wondered for the rest of the day if she still had what it takes after not writing for more than ten years.

She and her husband had failed in their business and were in debt, but she had to stay home while expecting. She started to think about all the hardships she'd been through and her parents' ill-fortuned marriage, and she couldn't help but write Seedlings. She completed it in just 16 days. She won first prize in the novella category--it was the first time in the history of the contest that the judges were unanimous in their decision.

Seedlings caused quite an uproar when it was published. Soon after, director Wan Jen adapted it into a movie. Liao and Hou Hsiao-hsien collaborated on the script, which won the Golden Horse award for best adapted screenplay the following year.

In the name of love

The reason this 10,000-word novella attracted so much attention was because previously no one had used such a purely feminine vision and sensibility to make such sharp judgments but also manage to be subtle and moving. The work's intricate depiction of a complicated mother-daughter relationship was also a rarity in a society where parents' authority had always been supreme.

"It seemed like suddenly everyone realized that within love there were lurking battles with authority, the huge burden of tradition, the struggle between the weak and the strong, the conditions of negotiation, and the bitterness of independence," Liao says. She writes in the preface to Seedlings that almost anyone living under one roof--whether parents and children or husband and wife--will have a tangled web of feelings of love and hate.

In her life, for example, she was successful in her career and gave all of her high salary to her mother in the hope the money would make up for her insecurities from living in poverty. What a pity it was that not only did her mother not appreciate it and use the money well, she ended up developing a greedy materialism. She'd invest it in losing ventures with her unsuccessful brother. Then when she was seriously ill, she wouldn't pay her medical fees herself. Rather, Liao had to borrow from friends to pay them for her.

Fearing that once Liao married the money would stop coming, her mother even tried to prevent her from having a social life. Though Liao was already more than 30 years old, her mother kept her on a curfew. If Liao was more than ten minutes late, her mother would lock the door. She'd only open it after cursing Liao until she was hoarse.

"Motherly love" was a guise for control, though sometimes real feelings slipped through and left Liao with mixed emotions. Even now she feels the hurt, but after reflecting on the past for such a long time, she's getting over it. "Through the years, I've learned to forgive," she says. "The wounds left by the people in your life who are closest to you bleed from time to time, but if we can learn from them to be more giving then it's worth it to let it all go."

Liao's Old Taiwan Tetralogy, about women during the Japanese colonial period, came out between 1991 and 1996.

All in the attitude

Liao challenged the inequalities between men and women in Seedlings in 1982, and the following year her award-winning No Road Home tackled the issue of marital infidelity in even more frank terms. Why, it asked, would a highly educated and skilled modern woman be willing to be the mistress of a married man--especially when that man's a failure in his career and is irresponsible? Once the affair is discovered, how can the wife keep her dignity when she knows the truth and when the mistress asks to be accepted?

Her 1986 novel There's a Little Rain Tonight continued the theme of women in difficult circumstances. It was the first to touch on the issues of marriage between an older woman and a younger man and marriage to an uneducated, underprivileged man--themes that were touchy for Taiwanese audiences. The novel is a frank depiction of the emotional entanglements that ensnare a woman called Chia-lo, her ex-boyfriend, and her husband. The men's personalities are quite different from one another, but both are selfish and neither is willing to take on the ordinary commitment of being in a relationship. But commitment is all the majority of women ask for in a man.

The film adaptation of that novel made stars of Lin Yi-chen and Ouyang Lung. Within a few years, Lin had left show business and quietly found a husband while Ouyang entered politics and maintained a clean image in his public and personal life.

"Life is full of subtle changes," Liao says. "Nobody knows in any given instant what the future holds." To her, life is one bittersweet scene after the next. The best attitude you can take is to face it all honestly and carry on bravely--even when you don't know what sort of hardships lie ahead.

For a modern woman like Liao, who is highly educated, highly paid, and independent, it's up to her whether she wants to work, marry, have kids, and even divorce. But it is all those choices that make it hard to make a decision. Men are affected too, not knowing how to respond to this type of woman.

"It's a difficult time for women," Liao says. "Isn't it the case for men, too? The stereotypical roles that have been in place for a thousand years have been shattered and redefined. In this new era, there are no models or signposts to follow. Men and women have to figure one another out in the dark. They need to cooperate, revise, and respond." Liao stresses that whether dancing with a partner or alone, the modern woman needs to get her own footwork in order first--that way, when with a partner, no toes will get stepped on.

Liao had her first child at age 34. Her children are the love of her life, and she's proud to be a mother.

Drawn from life

She's written three novels in succession, each of which stirred up debate on social issues and was made into a film. Some have called Liao a social "depth charge" for her explosive writing, while others have said she's merely complaining for no reason, acting as a bad influence on women and society. Still others are just shocked at what they perceive as her public airing of dirty laundry. In truth, it wasn't just her talent that allowed her to cause such a sensation.

While most writers have been working at their craft their entire lives, Liao only started writing professionally after spending 13 years in the business world. She was in the cutthroat ad business, the industry with the sharpest sense of the public pulse. She dealt with every kind of person and situation imaginable, and came to a deep understanding about women and men.

Not only did she understand, but her directness gave her a sharp pen and a take-no-prisoners style. Her first full-length novel, Blind Spot, put a man's inability to reconcile his mother and his wife into broad daylight:

Ting Su-su is the daughter of a well-to-do family, but despite her parents' objections she insists on marrying Chi Tzu-hsiang, the only son of a widow. After she gets married, she has to go straight home after work to cook. She has no time for the arts, and she can't do as she pleases anymore. And that's not all--her mother-in-law is prone to scold her without reason. She and her husband clash many times because of it. Her husband starts to stay out late to keep out of the battles between the two women. Her sister-in-law also finds herself with "no road home," stuck in an affair, and takes her own life. Su-su's mother-in-law puts the blame on her.

"Trapped in this situation, Ting Su-su had to take stock of her husband's attitude. She had never wanted Chi Tzu-hsiang to turn against his own mother on her account, but she needed some space to live in, where she could breathe and get a look at where she was going. She had already retreated until she was on the edge of a precipice. Besides work, duty, and obedience, what was left for her?"

Liao stresses her point: "Most of the time the relationship between a mother- and daughter-in-law is determined by the attitude of the man who is both a husband and a son. He is the fulcrum between the two. When the fulcrum is set, the outcome becomes fixed." But many men are too weak, she says, and cannot bear the burden or keep a balance. Due to the values of society, the one who usually ends up getting hurt is the "outsider" daughter-in-law.

Seedlings was made into a film of the same name soon after it was published. The film, directed by Wan Jen, was a representative work of New Taiwanese Cinema.

A writer's radar

Liao sees literature as "the study of people." It may seem that art imitates life, but actually it has a greater, more difficult role--it helps people find a way. Wounds that will never heal, regrets that can never be fixed, dreams and loves that have been lost--in the world of literature, all can be made well again.

With her practical experience in the advertising world, Liao never believed that imagination alone was enough to make for good writing. "Novels depend on structure, newspaper columns depend on inspiration," she believes. She always carries a small notebook with her so she can jot down things she sees or thinks. When she gets home, she copies her notes into a larger notebook. She's got separate sections for each kind of entry so she can always add information in an orderly fashion.

"A good writer is like a perceptive radar system," she says, "always taking in new information. You've got to be a good spy and eavesdropper, and you've got to use your own creativity and wisdom to transform and present it all."

When she sets out to write a novel, she first puts together a "chapter plan" detailing what characters and plot elements are needed in each chapter. "Creating characters is just like how when you go out walking you'll run in to someone," she says, "and from that person you can get some stories or emotions. Then you expand upon them and extend them into political, economic, and social levels, imagining different events and conflicts."

While the novel is formulating in her mind, she tries to read up on related topics. Her Old Taiwan Tetralogy, which was published between 1991 and 1996, was set in the Japanese colonial era. To prepare, she did four or five years of field research and data gathering. For example, she interviewed her father and other old-timers about restrictions on and distribution of opium during the Japanese era. One of the novels in the tetralogy discusses raising eels, so to prepare she went to an eel farm to observe.

It was only when she sat down to write that she realized all the problems she still had. For example, women's earrings during the period, the rations provided by the colonial government, the education system, adoption practices, houses of prostitution--though she had gathered a lot of data, she got caught up by many tiny details. She had to periodically stop writing to do more research. Luckily, her father--who'd always taken her to be the pride of the family--was there to help out and ask members of the older generation, and she was able to finish work on the series. Two parts of the tetralogy were made into television dramas by Taiwan Public Television and Set TV. Both were promoted as the TV stations' major productions of the year.

Seedlings was made into a film of the same name soon after it was published. The film, directed by Wan Jen, was a representative work of New Taiwanese Cinema.

A generation's agony aunt

As Liao's works take male-female relationships as their primary theme and are particularly concerned with the trials and growth of women, female readers often see in them the pain that they themselves could not express. Because of this, she's received tens of thousands of letters and phone calls, and is often asked questions at public appearances. To many readers, Liao is not just an author but also an "agony aunt" who will listen to them and provide advice.

Liao, who's not afraid to admit she only got married to escape the pressures of work and her mother, has two sons, but says she thinks it's fine for people to stay single. She says that marriage and children are the two biggest critical points in a woman's life, and are big sacrifices. For that reason, she suggests that people who want to get married should be married for at least three years before deciding to have kids, in order to have enough time to make sure they get along well enough. To women who find themselves in an "empty nest," she suggests that they bravely refrain from interfering and let their children live their own lives rather than using "love" to control and smother them.

A generation of Taiwanese women have, through their toil, turned into a new kind of "seedling"--one that can take root wherever it chooses. It just needs light, air, and water, and it will be able to flourish. Just as Liao Hui-ying has said, there has been no better time to be a woman, but there are more challenges these days as well. For the new seedlings to be their own masters, they have to be smart, tender, and courageous.

The awards displayed in Liao's study reflect her strength and the high expectations she has for herself.

Over the years, Liao has answered countless readers' letters and written more than 30 books on gender issues.