Born in the southern Taiwanese city of Tainan in 1925, Yeh first demonstrated his talent for writing at the age of 16 when Taiwan was under the yoke of Japanese colonial rule (1895-1945). His writing caught the attention of Mitsuru Nishikawa, who founded "Literary Taiwan" in 1940 and invited Yeh to be an assistant editor.
After the Kuomintang took over Taiwan following Japan's surrender at the end of World War II, the Japanese language was banned and Yeh switched to writing in Chinese. He claimed to have learned how to write that language by transcribing Tsao Hsueh-chin's (1715-1764) classic, "The Dream of the Red Chamber."
As an associate of left-wing writers, Yeh's political affiliation landed him in hot water with the KMT. In 1951, his literary career was interrupted after the forerunner to Taiwan Garrison Command--the island's security and intelligence organization until 1992--charged him with "harboring communist agents." He was tried and sentenced to five years in prison.
A lacuna asserted itself in Yeh's life for the next 16 years. The struggle to sustain his family after his release on parole in 1954 almost snuffed out the creative talent. It was not until 1965 that Yeh, having finally overcome the trauma of incarceration, started to write again. His first collection of short stories was printed in 1968, and since then, Yeh published more than 40 books. After a rewarding career as an elementary-school teacher, he retired in Kaohsiung County in 1991.
Yeh's most influential work is arguably "An Outline History of Taiwan Literature," published over two decades ago. For many Taiwanese researchers, this tome inspired thinking about island-specific literature. Peng Jui-chin, an assistant professor at the Department of Taiwanese Literature at Taichung-based Providence University, claims that the work established the foundation of Taiwanese literature as an independent discipline.
The book sets out to delineate literary development in Taiwan and the influence of Chinese classic literature from the period of Ming dynasty (1368-1644) loyalist and pirate Koxinga's reign over Taiwan through to the early years of Japanese rule. It documented and disseminated the emergence of Taiwanese literature under colonial rule, overwhelming writers and intellectuals in the 1920s. The remaining five chapters chronicle the post-war literary scene, encompassing works by major writers regardless of their political ideologies or origins.
"The tolerance and eclecticism demonstrated [in this book] warrant emulation," renowned writer and critic Chen Fang-ming stated. "Yeh's clear thinking and simple expressions put writers of different backgrounds in their proper context."
Another major achievement of Yeh is his talent for writing fiction. Local elements were blended to bring to life the existences of people from different periods throughout Taiwan's history. His works during the 1970s were filled with black humor, which, according to Peng, was a way to avoid government censorship. During the 1980s, he again ran this gauntlet by touching on Taiwan's White Terror era. His most recent novel, published in 2004, explores eroticism through the life of a man living in Tainan during World War II. At the book's launch in Kaohsiung, Yeh explained that the novel was aimed at unsettling gender bias and cultural unification, which he believed were imbedded in the thinking of Han Chinese culture.
Write to June Tsai at june@mail.gio.gov.tw