“Father of Taiwan’s Modernist Literature,” “literary giant,” “number-one supporter of Kunqu Opera”... Kenneth Pai has been described in all these ways.
Liu Jun, a professor in Nanjing University’s School of Liberal Arts who has published a massive biography on Pai, sums up as follows: What Kenneth Pai has sought all his life boils down to two things—“love” and “beauty.” Pai himself has expressed agreement with Professor Liu’s description.
Instant hit
From Taipei People to Crystal Boys, to Jade Love, and Wandering in the Garden, Waking from a Dream, many of Pai’s most notable works were written while he was still young. Someone once described his career as having started out right at the pinnacle and never looked back.
Pai published his first story, Madame Ching, in his early 20s. In this story there was none of the romance or melancholy that typifies much of the writing done by young authors. The writing style was very original. Professor Hsia Chi-an described Pai’s writing at the time as “mature beyond his years.”
The accelerated maturity of Pai’s writing style mirrors his life story. “People in my generation have lived through a hellacious time in China’s history. It affected our circumstances, our thinking, and forced us to grow up quickly.”
Born in 1937, the same year that the eight-year war against Japan began, Pai spent his entire childhood running from military conflict. No sooner did the war with Japan end than the civil war between the Nationalists and the Communists resumed. “There was always war, destruction, and flight. But in the process, the resilience and toughness of human nature shone through.... At a very young age, I understood the pain, the anguish, the helplessness, and the disappointment of the people of my father’s generation.”
Illness and lack of a permanent abode played a role in Pai’s sensitivity and early maturity.
Born the eighth of ten children, Pai contracted tuberculosis at age eight and spent the next five years isolated from his family. The lonely boy spent his days reading comics at home. Fortunately, however, he benefited from the company of a family cook with a gift for storytelling. Day after day, the cook would tell stories, a chapter or so at a time, from The Seven Heroes and Five Gallants, Expedition to the East, and Expedition to the West. “I would draw up a little stool and listen as he washed dishes and told me stories.”
It would be no exaggeration to say that the cook was Pai’s earliest inspiration as a writer. “If you write stories, then you are a part of the storytelling tradition. You’ve got to conjure up something that stirs the imagination and entertains.”
An undying stage character
Although he was an immediate success on the literary scene, Pai is not so impressed with his early works, and feels that maturity didn’t come until 1971 with the publication of Taipei People. So what would he consider his defining work? Says Pai: “If I had to choose, I’d go with Wandering in the Garden, Waking from a Dream. The vicissitudes of history and the disappointments of love are so much more searingly painful in this work.”
Pai’s stories have often been adapted into movies, television dramas, and works of theater and dance. And pretty much every single such adaptation has had to be done under the watchful eye of none other than Pai himself.
Last year, a stage production of Crystal Boys played to considerable fanfare. “I watched over every little detail, to the point I drove them crazy! But it was important. Every part of the play, every little transition, every connection, had to be done just right.”
Just like Yin Xueyan, whose character he brought to life, Pai is forever young and open at heart.
“I’m also very interested in the latest things,” says Pai, who has watched the hit Korean television dramas My Love from the Star and Dae Jang Geum. “I was curious about why Korean TV dramas should be so popular. Then I watched a couple and found they were produced with great care. The costumes, filming, and script all showed painstaking attention to quality. And the period dramas were done even better! The success of Korean television dramas is no accident.”
Red Chamber
It’s been said that no writer has ever been more profoundly influenced than Pai by Dream of the Red Chamber. Asked about this comment, he replies with a chuckle: “There’s no way I can disagree with that!”
“Dream of the Red Chamber is my bible,” says Pai, who has been reading the novel since he was quite young. Indeed, he gave a course on it at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he taught for 29 years.
“I swear, that novel was divinely inspired. I’ve read it again and again, and now in my 70s I still only have a rudimentary understanding of it!” Pai says that with each rereading, he feels awestruck at its beautiful use of language, the grandeur of its tragedy, and the ephemeral elusiveness of reality that it portrays.
Pai considers Dream of the Red Chamber to be a classic among classics: “This is an 18th-century masterpiece, written during the reign of the Qianlong Emperor, and there is nothing from that same period in the West to compare with it. Western literature reached tremendous heights in the 19th century, and lots of truly great works came out. But there’s nothing in Western literature that can match the breadth and depth of Dream of the Red Chamber, with its grounding in Buddhist, Daoist, and Confucian thought. It is so bristling with artifice. The writing is so beautiful. There are so many characters. It’s so true to life. You can’t find that in Western literature.”
“All the details in Dream of the Red Chamber come together like a huge jigsaw puzzle. But pick any part of it at random, and you’ll find it’s a great read all by itself. It’s uncanny, this novel!” Pai has high praise for the author’s adroit development of characters: “The characters virtually jump off the page, alive as you or me, when they speak!”
Who’s feeling that old joy now?
If Dream of the Red Chamber is the apex of beauty in Chinese literature, then Kunqu Opera is a cornucopia of all that’s best in traditional Chinese opera.
“Kunqu Opera has always been a central part of my life,” says Pai, explaining that Kunqu has been lodged deeply in his soul ever since, as a boy in Shanghai, he saw Mei Lanfang and Yu Zhenfei perform Interrupted Dream (from The Peony Pavilion).
After retiring from his university teaching position, Pai spent over a decade working to promote a revival of Kunqu Opera. Pai notes that Western opera has singing, but no dancing, and ballet has dancing but no singing. He says it is only Kunqu Opera that combines the two forms of stage art in a seamless whole.
But Pai lacks the chops to sing Kunqu himself, which he considers “a great regret.” When he was already in his 60s, he once asked a Kunqu instructor: “Is it too late for me to become a Kunqu performer?” The instructor replied: “Yes, it’s a bit too late.”
And so Pai gave up on the idea. But that didn’t dampen his enthusiasm for a Kunqu revival.
In April 2003, Pai successfully created a team from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the mainland to produce The Peony Pavilion Young Lovers’ Edition. The team would be introducing modern elements into the classical 16th-century Kunqu work authored by Tang Xianzu. After premiering in April 2004 at the National Theater in Taipei, Young Lovers’ Edition went on a world tour of over 260 performances. Pai was personally on hand for more than 150 of the shows.
“A lot of people are very moved by a nine-hour opera like this,” says Pai, adding that the performance of Kunqu Opera on school campuses has been very meaningful. “University courses on traditional culture are too few and far between. Kunqu is a combination of music, dance, fine art, and literature. You could present it as a cultural appreciation course.”
Father and son
Pai has expended a huge effort in recent years chronicling the life of his father. His purpose has been to set the record straight on his father’s conduct during the February 28 Incident of 1947, and to show the tremendous influence that the elder Pai exerted.
In 2012, Pai published Father and the Republic: Impressions of General Pai Chung-hsi, a photo-based work that generated intense interest in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and mainland China, as well as among China scholars in the West. Then in 2014 he published Healing the Pain: General Pai Chung-hsi and the 228 Incident, a full-blown biography that set forth historical materials and oral interviews focusing on his father’s time in Taiwan.
“It’s important to set the historical record straight.” The February 28 Incident was a very important event in Taiwan’s history, says Pai, who explains that General Pai Chung-hsi was ordered to come to Taiwan to deal with the crisis, and spent 16 critical days here at that time. A lot of people had been sentenced to death, but General Pai sent out an order forbidding indiscriminate killing and requiring that all cases be tried in public. At a time when so much was hanging in the balance, his father managed to save many lives.
His study of the past led Kenneth Pai to a new understanding of his father. “I really didn’t know my father well enough. So many things happened that I didn’t truly understand.”
A garden in full bloom
After a whirlwind of activity, Pai returned to his home in the US in late June to begin a period of seclusion.
“Taiwan is a great place, and Taipei is eminently livable, except for the summer.” Pai explains that he’s very familiar and comfortable with Taipei, where he has relatives and friends. But on his recent trip back, he was impossibly busy. “I was too busy. I had to go back to the US to get some peace and quiet. I have a garden full of flowers that need tending, a lot of books and movies to see, and a lot of writing that I’ve promised to do.”
Back in the US, Pai follows an utterly different routine, practically becoming a hermit. “Sometimes I go a whole week without saying a thing to anyone!”
Time spent alone is the best time for writing. “Writing is what I love best. I’ve got a million things I want to say to the readers, that I haven’t quite said correctly yet, or said at all.”
When he writes, Pai always starts off first of all with a character in mind. Only then does he work out a storyline. He still writes on ruled paper, using a black brush-tip pen: “Computers make me nervous. I’m always scared to death I’ll hit the wrong key and everything I’ve written will just disappear.”
A night owl, Pai always starts writing at about ten or 11 o’clock in the evening. “Writing is a long, slow grind for me. It’s difficult. Sometimes I can’t write a single character, but sometimes I’ll do a hundred or a couple thousand characters at a sitting. It all depends.” Asked what he’s currently writing, he becomes uncharacteristically reticent, and says simply: “Let’s talk about that after I’ve finished it.”
The indelible mark of Crystal Boys
Pai’s next publication is indeed something to look forward to.
In June 2015, the US Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage throughout that nation, triggering a global wave of discussion on the topic. But Pai had already set off shock waves himself way back in 1983 with his publication of Crystal Boys, a novel about a young gay man.
“Homosexuality is a part of human nature. The novel was worth writing.” During the writing, says Pai, he never worried at all about what sort of backlash it might elicit. “When a writer engages in an internal dialogue with himself, he must be 100% honest. Whatever you believe, that is what you should write.”
The book’s impact far exceeded Pai’s expectations. Not only was its publication not prohibited, it was even translated into English, French, German, Dutch, Japanese, and other languages, and sold worldwide. Pai reveals that the book is now being translated into Vietnamese, and someone in Ethiopia has contacted him to discuss copyright issues.
Crystal Boys has been praised as an “opera” that grinds tragedy into gold dust. But regardless whether he is lovingly crafting songs of tragedy or shocking readers by putting forward topics that are far ahead of the times, Pai’s works are just as eagerly anticipated today as they were a half a century ago.
After publishing his first work in the 1950s, Kenneth Pai was described by critics as “mature beyond his years.” But Pai himself feels he didn’t achieve maturity in his writing until the publication of Taipei People in 1971. (courtesy of Elite Books)
Kenneth Pai regards Dream of the Red Chamber as an unparalleled literary classic. What he finds most impressive is the bleak tragedy lurking beneath the gilded gaiety of the protagonists’ lives. Shown here is Cloud Gate Dance Theatre performing its take on Dream of the Red Chamber. (photo by Liu Chen-hsiang)
The novel Crystal Boys, published in 1983, is a seminal work among literature in Taiwan dealing with the topic of homosexuality. (courtesy of Asian Culture Publishing)
More than 30 years after its publication, Crystal Boys was performed by a dance troupe on stage. Pai says that this show was put on “for all the many young boys who are relegated to the streets during the dark nights, without any support system to fall back on.” (photo by Hsu Pei-hung)
In this family photo taken in 1943 in Guilin, eighth child Kenneth Pai is shown in the front row, first from the left. (courtesy of China Times Publishing)
Kenneth Pai left Taiwan in 1963 to study in the United States. His father Pai Chung-hsi is shown here sending him off at Songshan Airport in Taipei. (courtesy of China Times Publishing)
(courtesy of China Times Publishing)
(courtesy of China Times Publishing)
Kenneth Pai learned as a boy about the beauty of Kunqu Opera after watching a performance of Interrupted Dream. He’s been a huge aficionado ever since. (photo by Hsu Pei-hung)
With The Peony Pavilion Young Lovers’ Edition, Kenneth Pai achieved his dream of spurring a revival of Kunqu Opera. Shown here is the rousing curtain call after a 2005 performance in Taipei. (photo by Hsu Pei-hung)
