The great bronze statue was erected at the center of the city. It stood more than ten hundred chang (3,330 meters) in height and occupied ten mu (about 1.7 acres) of land. The city was encompassed by vast prairies, and the huge bulk of the bronze statue could be seen shining under the purple sun of the Huhuey world as far as fifty miles away. According to travelers of that time, when they looked down from their space vehicles, the Sorem City statue was always the most striking feature of the planet. Not even the Golden Temple of the capital was as magnificent. A statue of such grandeur was unparalleled, not only in the Huhuey world but in the entire universe.
-"The City of the Bronze Statue"
The paragraph, by Chang, Hsi-kuo, chairman of the department of electrical and computer engineering of the Illinois Institute of Technology, is distant in both language and concept from his many scientific computer publications and research papers. Indeed, Chang is known best to most Chinese, both here at home and abroad, not as a scholar and scientist, but as an outstanding writer. Though only 41, he has published some twenty books—short stories, "realistic" novels, science fiction, translations, and anthologies of criticisms and philosophical essays.
It is routinely supposed by most of us that the temperaments of scientists and of artists are mutually contradictory: To be a scientist, "one must be realistic and accurate;" for the artist, "a sympathetic heart and vivid imagination are necessary."
The famous Russian novelist Vladimir Nabokov, for one, disputed that cliche: "Science can't depart from imagination, nor art from reality," he said. A critics' writer, Nabokov was also an amateur scientist, deeply interested in research concerning butterflies and other insects.
It is intriguing that Chang Hsi-kuo, also, seeks harmony between science and art: "Computer science is my profession; it is what I make a living from. As to literary creation ... that is my life."
Chang, born in Szechwan Province in 1944, grew up lonely. Short and lumpy, he was frequently teased by his classmates and learned to shrink from companions—to withdraw to his own world.
His day to day associates were the characters from the books he read. And in his world of extended fancy, he was a hero-a fighting general, an adventurer ... anything but the awkward boy, constantly the target of others' fun. In the world of books, he felt secure and comfortable; in the real world, he could not. He browsed from classical Chinese novels to Dickens to Hemingway, and to works on existentialism.
Chang credits high school Chinese teacher Yang Yin-tzung and history teacher Liu Fong-han for his decision to be a writer.
Liu's vivid descriptions of historical events fascinated his students, but especially young Chang. And Yang, noting that the introspective lad showed extra talent in composition, strongly encouraged him.
When Chang was just a freshman at National Taiwan University, his first short story was published in a Taipei newspaper, and from that point on, he never stopped writing. Before graduation, he saw three books published: A Biography of the Rev. Pi (a novel); The Philosophy of Sartre (critical essays); and Adam's Belly Button (a collection of short stories, dramas, and critical essays).
Chang demonstrably sees writing as a serious responsibility. He does not merely create fiction, he tries to dissect social issues and lifestyles so his readers can experience the general atmosphere (and problems) of each particular environment.
The seven stories of The Earth (his fourth book, published in 1970) were mostly written at the University of California at Berkeley while he was studying for his doctorate. They bring to life the late 60s, when Taiwan's traditional rural society was gradually giving way before industrial lifestyles.
The young country folk of the time were anxious to leave the land behind and try their luck in the big cities. But there were also many others who had wandered for many years, far from their native homes, and who craved a close relationship with a rural lifestyle again. Chang belonged to the latter group.
Then during his days at Berkeley, he also became poignantly homesick.
In the title story for The Earth, a young sailor, Lee Ming, speaks for the author. "For years, I have traveled, to many places, meeting many people. And still I miss my hometown, small as it is, and the folks living there....foreign cities and distant harbors may be very beautiful, but I feel they do not belong to me; I can never truly settle in any of them. It is my hometown, small and plain, that is real—the only place for me."
In 1969, Chang presented his thesis, How to Teach Computers to Speak Chinese, and was awarded his doctorate. He first joined a research center in the suburbs of New York and, later, signed on as an associate professor at Cornell University.
In America, he witnessed the restless struggles of many Chinese immigrants from the Republic of China on Taiwan, from Hongkong, and from mainland China. Some of their stories appeared in The Earth, some in the subsequent, The Wanderers.
Chang returned to Taiwan, in 1972, to aid in a project to develop Chinese computers for the Academia Sinica as a consultant to the Executive Yuan (ROC Cabinet), and also taught the computer sciences at both National Taiwan University and National Chiao Tung University. Even this heavy work schedule did not deter him from his writing-from sensitively observing the world around him.
In The Earth, traditional values are noticeably diminished, but not extinguished. The protagonist, an old farmer, squeezes a living from a farming tract nobody else wants. He buys land inundated with stones and prepares it for cultivation with his bare hands, extracting the stones one by one. Via such stubborn effort, he cultivates an entire mountain slope over a thirty-year period. The old farmer is notable, but not unique.
During that period, commercial operations became most important, even invading social activities. Many intellectuals laid aside their pursuit of knowledge and plunged into money-making ventures. Conversations concerning human history and social responsibilities gave way to excited discussions replete with business terms-L/C, FOB, CIF now spotted every conversation.
And though, as time passed, they grew much wealthier than the intellectuals of any past Chinese generation, yet, even living in affluence, they could not help feeling that something was missing. Chang, identifying himself with this trend, often pondered the attributes of this new group, and its future. Gradually, a story focusing on the new lifestyle took shape in his mind and, in 1975, he published The Chess Champion.
The pivot of the story is a "wonder-kid" whose name is never mentioned. Circling around him are members of the new group-Chen Lin and his partner in an advertising agency, the producer of the weekly TV program "Wonder-Kids," a stock speculator named Chow Pei, and Chen's former classmate, Feng Wei-mingo
Chen Lin is the originator of "Wonder-Kids," which introduces a specially talented child each week. It is not a very popular show, partly because the talents of some of the wonder-kids are not very wonderful at all. Some are even faked.
The "Wonder-Kid" producer knows all this very well, so when someone recommends a young whiz at five-pieces chess (in which the goal is to be the first to line up five playing pieces), he does not expect him to be any more special than most of his predecessors.
Then Chen Lin accidentally discovers that the boy has a gift for prophesy, and when he reveals this to his associates, they all become anxious to exploit this promising talent
The producer wants to have the boy compete in the very complicated hsiang chess (similar to Western chess) against famous adult chess players in order to boost the show's ratings.
Chow Pei, the stock speculator, hopes to have the boy help him to great fortune in the stock market.
Feng Wei-ming, who was a history student at the university, though now a "typical" businessman, is different; he nurtures a deep concern for the fate of mankind. He wants to use the boy to reveal the future.
Chen Lin begins to feel sorry for the boy when he sees him become the dehumanized prey of his greedy associates; he asks nothing of him. .
The "wonder-kid" looks like almost any teenager, except for an occasional flash in his eyes and an unusually big head; and he is very thin. Playing five-pieces chess is a simple joy for him. He has no interest in the matters the adults put before him. But the adults will not let him alone. They press him harder and harder until...the boy vanishes.
Each adult then suspects the other of spiriting the boy away exclusively for himself. And Chen finally discovers that this is actually the case. Feng Wei-ming has taken the boy home to ask him to ponder carefully the future of mankind.
When Chen comes to seek the boy, Feng presses frantically, "Please, think carefully and tell me the future of the world. I am sure you can see it.
"The boy lets out a scream. His eyes open wide, and an extremely horrible expression distorts his face. Chen Lin has never seen such a terrible look before. The boy's triangular face is twisted, his lips purple. His body now cramps as if sustaining an electric shock. He jumps up in mid-air, and falls heavily to the ground."
When the boy comes around, the flash is gone from his eyes. Seeing them dull now, Chen Lin immediately knows that the wonder-kid is no more. The adults lose their interest in him.
Chen Lin is almost happy for him, but the producer won't give the boy up. He has already run TV announcements on a game between the wonder-kid and a famous chess player. The boy must appear on the show.
Chen Lin again grows worried: In the boy's present condition, how can he play well? The boy tells him confidently, "I can play chess on my own."
The boy plays well and wins, though not without some effort. A confused Chen, alone with the boy, probes: "I won't bother you any more, but I hope you will tell me-Do you still have the gift of prophesy or not?"
The boy looks at him, smiling, "I don't need the gift of prophesy. I can play chess on my own. I like to play chess. Won't you play with me?"
After playing a few rounds with the boy, Chen stands up and says goodbye. The boy grins at him silently. At this moment, Chen seems to see flashes in the boy's eyes. When Chen stares again, the boy seems an ordinary teenager.
Chen was once a hopeful art student. He staged exhibitions, even ran a gallery for some time. As a result, he attained some fame in artistic circles. Yet, he knew very well that he was no genius.
"It was very obvious to him. Even if he cut off his ears in a spasm of fanaticism, he would never stimulate his painting skills to even his own satisfaction."
He finally gave up the idea of being a professional artist and, with the same ardor he had devoted to art, began to believe in the power of money. "Money is freedom. Money is truth," he told a friend. Yet, he never gave up painting completely—a last vestige of artistic conscience.
When he first discovered the boy's unusual gift, he thought of having the boy predict stock market trends for him. Yet he felt guilty. "I would only do it once. I know it's not right but...all I want is to paint, I can still paint, I will make money with the boy's help this once only, then wash my hands of it," he told his brother.
The incidents involving the wonder-boy are an enlightenment to Chen. Everybody else involved is an opportunist, hoping to reap whatever they can without effort. But the boy chooses to play chess on his own, without the help of his heavenly gift.
Chen finally understands the boy: "Isn't life also a game of chess, and up to each man himself to win or lose?" He regains a lost confidence in himself. Though he knows he can never produce great works, as long as he does his best, he says to himself, everything will be just fine.
The author, himself, has claimed, "Others may write for art, but I only write for man."
In writing, he says, he does not concern himself with technique. Yet, his writings demonstrate unique style attainments.
He sketches the background of a story in a few lines: "Looking around, there is apartment after apartment after apartment after apartment. And their thousands of TV antennas are the jungles of Taipei-growths in which no bird would ever perch."
In this environment, in the early 70's, the tempo of life itself is brisk. And the sentences of his novel are an echo, short, clear-cut...staccato.
The theme and style of The Chess Champion are coordinates. And the story itself is carefully selective, limiting time and places.
Chang shows a burgeoning ingenuity even with minute details. He uses the numbers of pieces of chess on illustrative chessboards in the book to indicate the numbers of his chapters.
In 1975, Chang moved to Chicago, where he was first a professor at the University of Illinois, then both professor and chairman of the department of electrical and computer engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology. Here, in order to make more time for his research and writing, he quickly requested an associate chairman to help with administrative affairs.
In his Chicago study, nine computers interconnect with those at the institute, with a robot, and with a mechanical arm. After ten o'clock every night, he puts aside his scientific work with the computer linkage, sometimes writing until two in the morning.
"I was born in mainland China, grew up in Taiwan, and now work in the United States," he explains. "This complicated background helps me to probe my native culture from many angles." He has also had opportunities to meet Chinese from all over the world. With a patently sympathetic heart, he details the dilemmas of many such overseas Chinese in The Wanderers, Yesterday's Anger, and The Waters of the Yellow River.
The columns he wrote for ROC newspapers, commenting on local social and economic issues, were later collected into the two books, Heroes Seldom Shed Tears and Let the Future Wait. "Though I spend most of my time in the States, I return to Taiwan at least two or three times a year. So I am quite familiar with what's going on there," he stresses.
The most important particular body of work produced by Chang, the writer, has, in recent years, been his translations and original writings in the genre of science fiction.
He began, in 1978, to carefully select from the world's outstanding science fiction works and to translate them for the Chinese reader under the (Chinese) pen-name, "Clear Stone." He discussed impelling motives in an article:
"The mainstream of Chinese novels has been realism. Chinese of all times have so valued life on this world, that even their nether world is modeled after it. But in the late 20th Century, this world of ours has been undergoing some drastic changes .... Science fiction shows us various possible faces of the years ahead, which may help us to be mentally ready for an unknown future."
He also remarked, "Realism is one of the major characteristics of Chinese literature. The introduction of fantasy fiction may make up for certain insufficiencies of realism, expanding the realm of our culture."
Chang wrote a few science fiction pieces in the early 70s (collected in The Earth). Then, in 1980, came the ten-story collection, The Star-Cloud Suite.
He seldom attempts to captivate readers with science-fiction jargon or dazzle them with ingenious machines. Instead, he invites the reader to soar with him across the immense seas of the universe, there to observe humanesque stories in different times and spaces.
The subjects of his futuristic stories are often garnered from the distant past-Chinese literary traditions. "I like to use allusion. Readers who can't identify my allusions will still enjoy the lively stories. But perhaps those who do will have a little more fun."
Solemn and introspective in his realistic works, Chang is definitely humanistic and romantic in most of his science fiction.
In Homecoming, the first story in The Star-Cloud Suite, Wu Fen-fen is a worker at an undersea surveying station. Apart from a co-worker, her only regular contact is with the "Machine First Group," a company of computer-controlled, undersea-engineering tanks.
The designers of the Machine First Group, Professors Chong and Tai, were Wu's supervising professors when she was a post-graduate student. And the "Machine" has inherited the characters of its two inventors. It can, literally, read Wu's mind and transmit its own messages to her via a mental broadcasting system; a receiver is implanted in her brain. The "Machine" constantly shows fatherly concern for Wu's loneliness, her secret love for her co-worker, and when the station is attacked and destroyed by enemies, for her safety. Finally it sacrifices its own "life" in order to save her.
In Romance on the Day the Sorem Fell, Chang tells a touching tale of a couple from a different age who choose to die hand-in-hand in the Sorem City which existed thousands of years before their time.
Chang credits this science-fiction idea to the short story, Romance on the Day the City Fell, by female novelist Chang Ai-lin. "I admire Madame Chang, and this story of hers enchanted me very much. So I rewrote it in the form of science fiction.
"Also, I had promised myself: 'Should our island (Taiwan) encounter imminent, active danger, I will return to it and share its destiny.' I had the male protagonist, Wang Shing, fictionally carry out my determination in this story."
"Wang decides to go back through the centuries via time machine to Sorem City as it is being besieged by the Snakemen. The subsequent damnation of the city is recorded in detail in the history books. As a history student, Wang is also aware that he will be powerless to save Sorem City and thus alter a historical event. Yet, he chooses to experience that period, and eventually die in it."
For dozens of years, the world's science fiction writers have overwhelmingly projected a foreboding, oppressive future for mankind. The most famous such treatment is George Orwell's ominous 1984. Chang pursues such a chilling approach in his tale of over-developed robots, House of Playthings. These super robots not only dominate the earth, but call themselves "human beings." The real human beings are merely playthings to them, like all the other animals.
In Star-Cloud Suite, Chang is much more concerned with the conceit and follies of contemporary man, which he highlights in an ironic tone.
In Hoping for A Brilliant Son, he mocks the preference for male children among modern parents, and their overreaching anxiety to assure that their children are outstanding in every respect.
In Perfect Interpretations, he satirizes the irresponsibility and misleading works of many a modern translator.
In The Dream Controller's Romance, the reader is led to expect a typical science fiction tale adorned with such fancy machines as the "Dream TV": then the Anti-Dream-TV Alliance appears. Ironic parallels to factions among modern literary circles are obvious.
In The City of the Bronze Statue, Chang introduces the rise of Sorem City; in Romance on the Day the Sorem Fell, its, demise. Later on, taken with the developing theme, he began developing, the materials into a trilogy, The City, in which The City of the Bronze Statue is adapted as a preface to Five Jade Discs, published in 1983, as the first section.
The lively style and knight-like characters in the novel will be familiar to readers of both classical Chinese novels and pop Chinese chivalrous novels. On another front, his various odd creatures from distant planets are as much weird fun as those depicted in the movie Star Wars.
Chang also loves to play with words, turning and twisting them into new forms. In the Five Jade Discs, he not only sketches a complete history of another civilization, complete with customs and bureaucratic system, but also creates a special language (including carefully depicted body language); he adds a complete "du-wu" philosophy (one of the major achievements of the civilization), as well as a "du-wu" chess game and a"du-wu" ball game.
Also, he ingeniously adapts modern slang into the unique languages of his outer-space creatures. For example, the word gai in contemporary Chinese, and especially as used among the young, indicates "to boast." It appears in the novel as Gai-wen, a type of outer-space creature. Readers can guess that the Gai-wen will prove to be deceitful and crafty.
The Immortals, a collection of five stories published at almost the same time as The Five Jade Discs, is intended as part two of The Wanderers. The title characters of The Immortals no longer roam foreign countries, as did those in The Wanderers; they seem, instead, to have lost personal contact with their own land. Chang now coldly points out, in fiction, defects of modern society as exemplified in opportunism-minded intellectuals. The writing techniques in this work have been specially praised by the critics. Chang carefully sets his scenes, then narrates points of view that fill them out.
He has been working on the second and third parts of The City. Though the writing takes much of his time, he enjoys doing science fiction. Yet he continues his "realistic" writing also, and his goal continues to be identification as a major writer.
Chang Hsi-kuo, successful scientist-writer—and even experimental movie maker—is very distant from the lumpy boy with the desperate need to hide in a small world of his own. But he still favors "small" scenes:
"I have always preferred a smaller living environment. I am never at ease in big cities like Taipei. The small town of Hsinchu, where I spent my teens, is my favorite place to stay in Taiwan. And the book, Beautiful Small World, appeals to me very much; I believe that a beautiful world must be comparatively small.
"The concept, 'small,' is no longer an equivalent to 'backward.' The development of technology permits us now to live in smaller communities where we can enjoy the intimate human relationships of old and, at the same time, the culture and material environments once found only in the big city. I am sure that man's ability is really adequate to create a much more rational society than we have now."
He is one among such able men, doing his part for a better society as both scientist and writer.