Searching for a foreign flavor
However, it certainly isn't every ECM writer who has that kind of marketability. This is especially true of works for which Malaysia and the overseas Chinese immigrant experience serve as a background.
Take Chang's Herd of Elephants as an example. The background to the story involves an overseas Chinese family in the Borneo rain forest and the rise and fall of the Malaysian Communists. Although the publisher printed "A 'Judges Selection' from the Second China Times Million-Dollar Novel Contest" on the cover and discounted the book to NT$199, so far, even the first printing has yet to sell out. Chang has a laugh at his own expense, saying, "Not more than a couple of people in Taiwan have read the book."
In her article "Where's My Homeland?-The Evolution of Ethnic-Chinese Malaysian Writers in Taiwan," Hsu Shu-chin, who writes for the books page of the China Times, states, "The works of ECM writers living in Taiwan have been overlooked or misunderstood by Taiwan's readers; local readers have nothing to say about them."
Ng Kim Chew says, "Taiwanese readers are not interested in Southeast-Asian literature. They are more receptive to translations of English- and Japanese-language works." He thinks that the local educational system has left Taiwan's readers unable to form a broader view of place and history. "It's often assumed that the Malaysian background gives the works a foreign feeling. Those who read them are people who are looking for something different."
Does this prompt writers to change their style?
In Kosan's Daughter, Chang was trying to produce something about Taiwan, but he feels, "No matter how I try to write something like that [about Taiwan], my understanding of Taiwan is not as deep as that of the place where I was born and raised. So it seems better to me to write what I know."
"I feel that you can't cater to readers," says Ng Kim Chew. "Writing unpopular books isn't necessarily a bad thing. Literary fame is easily lost. Unpopular books have the virtue of not being easily commercialized. If you hope your works will stand the test of time, not being popular might be a help."
Li Jui-teng, who is much concerned with these ECM writers, believes, "Of course, in literature, you must be concerned with where you are, but when you are writing, you also cannot escape where you came from." Regardless of whether what the ECM writers produce is familiar to Taiwan's readers, ultimately, the point is whether or not it is well written.
A cultural embellishment
While a writer can wait 20 years for readers to discover his work, he hopes for immediate critical acclaim.
Ng Kim Chew says that even though the quality of the works by ECM writers has been tested and affirmed after literary battles large and small, these works have not managed to interest Taiwan's critics.
"The fact that no one is interested in doing criticism indicates that the literary criticism market thinks that these works don't mean much to modern Taiwan," Ng says pessimistically.
So, what meaning does he find in them?
"ECM literature can provide Taiwan's writers with another alternative to consider." Ng says that today's Taiwanese literature is a relic of the May 4 Movement and a Western transplant. Everybody's work is the same in this respect. Chinese literature from Malaysia lets people see the possibilities Chinese takes on when placed in a different locale.
"Taiwan is too small. Works produced here too easily take on the same character. Most of it is urban literature. There isn't much difference between its various rural areas. Putting it bluntly, it's a pretty barren place."
Choong Yee Voon, who describes her own character as being like that of a wild ape, grew up in an oil palm grove. It was the kind of place where the hills were filled with squirrels, lizards and free-range chickens and people raised snakes to eat mice. Having had such animals as her playmates when she was a child, she unconsciously personifies all of nature. In her writing, this personification comes out very naturally. "A few thousand years ago, the heart of the bamboo turned soft for a moment and he made a promise. Even to today, the kind-hearted trees must sacrifice their lives to bear the never-ending stream of human language."
Li Ang, in criticizing Herd of Elephants, says of the book's imagery, "Startled by crocodiles, lizards, elephants and floods, dumbfounded by great rivers, incessant rains and guerrilla warfare, we, the worn-out readers of the end of the 20th century have again found a space for fantasy. We hear the call from the deepest wells of life and are baptized in its waters."
A trans-cultural structure
Chen Peng-hsiang also feels that ECM literature is significant to Taiwan's literary scene. "Chang Kuei-shing pulled together the setting in Borneo, a Western literary form and the Chinese written language into a huge literary work. There's no one in Taiwan who can compare to him."
Instead, he compares Chang's work to that of last year's winner of the Nobel Prize for literature, which combined Western and African culture into a work which possessed great cultural depth.
Li Yung-ping spent eight years writing Jiling Chunqiu (A Tale of Jiling Village), which he wrote as an effort to forge a "purely Chinese work." Though he didn't set the book, which deals with a distant, mythical country, in his eastern Malaysian hometown, the richness of his hometown is in no way inferior to that of Latin America. Nonetheless, Ng Kim Chew says, "[You] can't deny that [his change of setting] is disappointing."
Chen Peng-hsiang feels that Li Yung-ping has "used the cleansing of his Chinese to cleanse himself. He's leaped from being an illegitimate son to being the heir-apparent." However, in clearing the "evil" westernisms out of his language, he has also cleansed his language of his hometown, eliminating its rural character and its "impurities."
Choong Yee Voon doesn't think that she need write about Malaysia to produce something that is meaningful to Taiwan's literary scene. "Perhaps this is related to genre. Essays are more closely tied to the writer's own life."
In Choong's recently published collection of essays, Fishing for Sleep, her style moves from description to up-close examination. She writes of sleep, conversation, long hair, itching. . . . But she says that "It'll probably be a while before I write about Malaysia." She emphasizes that this is to let the sediments of the past "settle for a little bit."
Neither do you find anything of Malaysia in Chan Tah Wei's poems: Scattering seeds which become soldiers, the pen moves like a god/ Lighting the candle, heating the wine, making them live:/ Fan Kuai becomes Fan Kuai, Fan Zeng is Fan Zeng/ The skeleton of history recast in flesh and blood-at Hongmen.
A war of words
Perhaps Wen Jui-an, who is also a poet, didn't write about Malaysia in the early years because of his sentiments about Greater China. In Chan Tah Wei's case, however, it seems to be that his choice of topic just hasn't happened to include Malaysia. And unlike the ECM who came to Taiwan to study years ago, the new generation is not giving up their Malaysian citizenship in favor of ROC citizenship. They have a strongly Malaysian consciousness. And although they actively compete for literary prizes in Taiwan, they also continue to participate in the literary life of their hometowns.
Basking in the glory of winning several of Taiwan's literary prizes, three or four years ago these writers gathered together some money and used it to put together a collection of modern ECM poetry and essays. The collection revealed that their literary ideology is quite different from the local tradition.
Chan Tah Wei, who was instrumental in this effort, was openly critical in an article: "Conservatively speaking, ECM poetry has a history of 70 years, but I have no interest in what came before 1970. Most of it is simply bellowing. . . . Poor poems and non-poems account for 90% of it."
"The [ECM] writers in Taiwan are too flashy. They go home firing cannons. Their work is a major blow to the local [Malaysian] literary scene, which is still involved with traditional realism," says Li Jui-teng. He feels that the awards they have won have helped to raise the level of writing in Malaysia, but have also caused them to become the rivals of the writers "back home."
"The younger generation, most of whom reside in Taiwan, seem to take the idea of 'not resting until each word startles the reader' to heart," said an article on ECM writers which appeared in Yazhou Zhoukan magazine at the end of 1997. The writer noted that the younger generation's criticisms of ECM literature "have a Taiwanese flavor," which made writers of the older generation defensive. The two sides have thus become embroiled in a "war of words."
ECM writer Li Tse-shu, who won first prize in the United Daily News' short story contest two years ago, has never been to Taiwan. She admits that originally, she decided to "enter a Taiwanese literary contest with some thought of vengeance in mind."
From her outsider's point of view, "These writers who live in Taiwan are exceptionally conceited and arrogant. They dare to resist tradition and have brought about changes, but their works have a Taiwanese flavor. It's almost as if they are exploiting the South Pacific and ethnic conflict in the same way that Zhang Yimo has sold old China to the nations of the West."
In search of a literary "Garden of Eden"
If they write about Taiwan, they are "eliminating the 'impurities' of their hometowns." If they write about Malaysia, on the other hand, they are "exploiting the South Pacific and ethnic conflicts." So where is the Eden of these ECM writers?
Many are searching for an answer to this question. If they one day choose to make Taiwan their home, they must think about how to deal with the problems of settling in Taiwan. But after choosing to make Taiwan their "new heartland," how long must it be before they can cast off the "ECM" label and enter the ranks of "Taiwanese writers"?
Ng Kim Chew feels that Chang Kuei-shing is "attempting to use the language of poetry to overcome everything." In his writing, he is seeking a pure aesthetic. He is taking the people and events of history, and by passing them through an aesthetic filter, turning them into a kind of poetic myth.
In Li Yung-ping's case, the rise of a Taiwan consciousness has made his deeply Chinese identity into a heavy burden. It has forced him to move beyond the Hakka language of his ancestors, and compelled him to learn the Taiwanese dialect, which appears frequently in his two later novels.
"Shut out by ethnocentrism and drowning in their Chineseness, these writers have to find their own means of survival." Ng Kim Chew says that the future is unknown, but believes that it will be open to all who wield a pen.
p.101
Ethnic-Chinese Malaysians view the preservation of Chinese culture as a "moral imperative," and their literature has always held a special place in the Chinese-speaking world. The picture shows a cultural event put on at the Chinese center by the overseas Chinese of Kuala Lumpur. (photo by Diago Chiu)
p.103
(above left) The Chinese Nationalists brought their revolution to the Southeast Asia, where they built schools for overseas Chinese. Their activities influenced the themes and style of the early writings of ethnic-Chinese Malaysians. (photo by Diago Chiu) But the works of Choong Yee Voon (top) and Chang Kuei-shing (above), much-acclaimed writers of the new generation, have abandoned this focus on "Greater China."
p.105
Chinese immigrants from the same ancestral hometowns gather together in Chinese associations. These groups often provide scholarships and prizes to students, helping future generations get ahead. (photo by Diago Chiu)
p.106
Is Taipei really an international publishing center for Chinese literature, the "new heartland" to all authors of works in Chinese?