The bitter years
When Japan invaded China, Wang returned to the "safety" of his hometown, but his relatives had it in for him. They helped bring about his capture by Japanese soldiers, who gave him a choice between serving in the Japanese Imperial Army or being executed. Much to his surprise, someone showed up in the middle of the night with bolt cutters and set him free. Fully awake to the treacherous intentions of his relatives, Wang decided to head for southern China and make a life there together with Yueh-ching, the sweet and innocent daughter of a tenant farmer. The two married, and warfare continued. The surrender of the Japanese was followed by the resumption of civil war between the Kuomintang (KMT) and the communists. With the communists driving the KMT steadily southward, Wang and Yueh-ching, accompanied by Wang's cousin, eventually boarded a ship bound for Taiwan.
After arriving in Kaohsiung, the family found a stack of hay and went to sleep. Wang became a day laborer at the docks, where he had to struggle fiercely for three years just to keep food on the table. Sometimes he would go several days in a row without being offered any work, and worries weighed heavily on his mind. There was a baby at home to be fed. Would Yueh-ching have to ask for leftovers again at the army post?
In 1952, recommended by a cousin, Wang was hired to teach at Lotung Middle School in Ilan County. There he earned a monthly salary of NT$300, hardly sufficient to support a family of six. They moved into an abandoned shack. A typhoon soon rendered this uninhabitable, however, and they had to take refuge in a dilapidated, windowless structure. But the roof leaked, which was disastrous in rainy Ilan. The children slept under umbrellas.
The painter Huang Yu-cheng, a former student of Wang's at Lotung Middle School, remembers that Wang spoke little in class. He would just write instructions on the chalkboard ("sketch," "do water colors," etc.) and let the students do whatever they wanted. For the sake of his growing children, Wang would seldom eat lunch, and he and his wife both had serious gastric ailments. But in spite of the hardships, Wang, by now in his 40s, still wrote in his journal: "You are a painter. No matter what your circumstances, you're still a painter."
He would do sketches late at night by the light of a kerosene lamp. Without an easel or even a table, he used wooden crates for small sketches, and the floor for large ones. It became a habit with him, and even now he will do his art absolutely anywhere. He lays canvases on the bed, or hangs them on the back of a chair or a wall, and gets right to work. He has spent so much time bent over canvases that his back is now permanently hunched. He has also earned himself the sobriquet "the best painter who never used an easel."