Not thinking only of himself
Before entering the Chung Chao-cheng Literary Park, let’s first take a look at Chung himself.
Chung is known as “the mother of Taiwan literature,” a phrase which originated with the author Dongfang Bai. In the biography of Chung written by his second son, Chung Yen-wei, there is a passage which reads: “Old Mr. Chung had no objections to this, but would occasionally grumble, ‘I’m clearly male, so how could I be the mother of anything?!’”
Nonetheless, there is a certain logic behind this title. Chung wrote prolifically throughout his life, writing more than 20 million Chinese characters by hand and producing major works in the roman-fleuve genre (“river novels”—a series of novels on the same theme) including the trilogies “Turbid Waters” and “The Taiwanese.” He also devoted a great deal of energy to guiding and supporting writers of younger generations and to promoting those of older generations, as well as to movements to revitalize the Hakka language and culture. Taoyuan-born author Chu Yu-hsun, in his book When They Were Not Writing Novels: Portraits of Novelists from Taiwan under Martial Law, crafted an apt and intriguing title for his chapter on Chung: “Because Chung Chao-cheng Didn’t Think Only of Himself.”
During his life, Chung was able to switch between Hakka, Japanese, Taiwanese Hokkien, and Mandarin. Born in the era of Japanese rule, he was 20 when the ROC government took control of Taiwan in 1945. It was only then that he began reading books in Chinese, and he was only able to transcend this linguistic barrier and write fluently in Mandarin after six years of dedicated study. At that time he began to submit writings to publications, but he suffered frequent rejections. In 1957 he wrote a letter from his home in Longtan to invite Taiwanese authors to create a monthly publication called The Literary Friends Newsletter, bringing together Taiwanese writers to discuss issues and learn more about the craft of writing from one another.
In 1960 Lin Hai-yin, then editor-in-chief of the literary supplement of the United Daily News newspaper, took a liking to Chung’s novel Lupins and began to serialize it in the paper. Thereafter Chung urged his fellow writers to try to seize opportunities in this literary format. He also was instrumental in encouraging the completion of novels including Dongfang Bai’s Sand in the Waves and Lee Chiao’s “Wintry Night” trilogy.
Chung not only encouraged new writers, but also, as described in Chu Yu-hsun’s book, carefully used his influence to help writers of older generations than himself. He edited collections of stories by Taiwanese writers and promoted the revival of works by older authors. He described it as “a strategy of crawling forward to occupy the stage, and then immediately sharing the stage with more Taiwanese writers.” It was because Old Mr. Chung did not think only of himself that Chu concluded: “He virtually single-handedly changed the direction of literature in Taiwan.”
Chung wrote a huge number of works, and was the first author in Taiwan to work in the “roman-fleuve” genre. The books on the shelf are a set of his collected works published by the Taoyuan City Government.
Longtan was once a major tea-producing area. Chung’s novel Lupins is set against the background of tea farming.