Beating the pavement
When Liu Yung and his son Liu Hsuan spoke at Chinese People's University, the standing-room-only crowd spilled out beyond the auditorium. Students perched on window sills and listened as the father-and-son duo followed their speeches with an impromptu musical performance.
Taiwanese authors with a big following in the PRC, such as Liu Yung, Chu Teh-yung, Lin Ching-hsuan, and "Slicker" Tsai, no longer communicate with their audiences via the published word, at two degrees of separation. Now they travel to the mainland in person to meet with their readers face-to-face at press conferences, book signings, and speeches.
"The mainland is so big. You have to travel the length and breadth of the country with a cup of water in your hand, inviting to people to drink from it." So says Lin Ching-hsuan, who is included by mainland critics among a group that's been dubbed "the four geniuses." Lin, who used to give 200 speeches per year in Taiwan, first traveled to mainland China four years ago, touring in the northwest for a month and following an itinerary arranged by his PRC agent. Since then he has been to more than 40 cities on the mainland and spoken at over 100 universities. His book signing sessions are always big events; once they actually had to bring in 16 police officers to maintain order.
"If you want to be a big name for just a little while," says Xu Longsen, the Shanghai-based agent of painter Cheng Tsai-tung, "all you have to do is spend some money. But if you want people in mainland China to remember your name, you have to become a part of the scene here. You have to rub elbows with people, and keep doing it for ten years." The painter Cheng Tsai-tung, noted for the "rat-race dropout" spirit reflected in his works, moved to Shanghai in 2000 and took part last year in a big contemporary art exhibition in the PRC. The event featured famous painters from three different phases of the post-Cultural Revolution period, including Zhang Xiaogang and Yue Minjun.
Chu Teh-yung, author of the comic serials Double-Gun Salute (about a married couple) and Uptown Singles (about four young women), has also made a name for himself on the mainland. These two comic series sold several million copies after they were published in the PRC. Chu now contributes regularly to Beijing Youth News and four other PRC publications. In addition, the PRC's China Central Television is planning to collaborate in producing a television drama based on Uptown Singles.
However, the literature from Taiwan making a big splash in mainland China almost all qualifies as xiao pin literature (generally light prose of short to medium length). Commenting on this phenomenon, mainland Chinese cultural critic Xie Xizhang notes that the residential patterns of old Bei-jing were disrupted by the Cultural Revolution. High-ranking government officials used to live primarily on the east side, and the area had a very cultured air. Rich merchants congregated on the west side, while the south side was the plebian part of town. During the Cultural Revolution, however, the highly educated cultural and political elite came under attack, and the Chinese people emerged from those years of chaos less prepared to appreciate refined culture.
Says Xie: "There is a fault line running through Chinese culture. There's no way a mainland-born author could write the really beautiful yet easily accessible sort of xiao pin works that authors from Taiwan turn out." Xie explains that the writers of his generation never read fairy tales when they were kids, and they started reading Marx and Lenin at age 15. They focused on ideology, and didn't care about the quality of their individual lives. Lacking the cultural background of Taiwan-based writers, they are naturally unable to write the same kinds of works. Xie continues: "We shouldn't look down our noses at these best-selling authors from Taiwan. The really well known ones represent the very best of popular culture, and without solid grounding in the culture, they couldn't remain cultural icons for long."
It also happens that writing from Taiwan speaks to the concerns of the PRC's newly arising "petit bourgeoisie." Liu Yung, Lin Ching-hsuan, and Chien Chen are all represented in mainland China by Qu Xiaoxia, who says that their works are just the kind of writing that mainland readers need now that China is growing rich and people are beginning to care about the quality of their lives. Qu points especially to the experiences of a man like Liu (who is intimately familiar with life in both the United States and Taiwan) and to the writing style of Lin Ching-hsuan, who re-creates a character's inner world so vividly.
Similarly, Xu Longsen, the Shanghai-based agent of Cheng Tsai-tung, says of his client and good friend: "Tsai-tung has enjoyed a good life ever since he was a kid. Although we in the mainland do not lack people of cultural depth, mainland writers aren't capable of taking the bric-a-brac of our daily lives and elevating it to the level of culture. He's the consummate epicure. If you want to know where to have fun or where the best places to eat are, he's the one to ask."
Beijing's east side is characterized by its rows of stately enclosed compounds that were home in an earlier time to the capital's political and intellectual elite.
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