Taiwan Today

Kenneth Hsien-yung Pai devotes himself to literature, creative writing and the promotion of Kunqu opera.

“Kenneth Hsien-yung Pai is back in .” The news made the rounds of ’s literary circle as the author, who has lived in since the mid-1960s, paid one of his frequent visits to the city in the fall of 2008. “ is such a special place for me,” the 71-year-old Pai, always smiling amicably, said at a seminar on his works organized by the Graduate Institute of Taiwanese Literature at National Chengchi University (NCCU) in October 2008. “I never feel the impact of jet lag after the trip to , but I often feel groggy for nearly two weeks after I fly from to the States. There must be a message in this. This city and I sing the same tune.”

It is not surprising for Pai to think so, although he lived in for only 11 years in total. “My life experienced peace for the first time after I moved to from mainland ,” says the author of Taipei People, a collection of 14 short stories that to this day is perhaps his best-known work. First published in 1971, the book has since been translated into several languages including English and Japanese. In 1999, the Hong Kong-based weekly Yazhou Zhoukan ranked it seventh on a list of the 100 best Chinese-language works of fiction of the 20th century as chosen by 14 judges from more than 500 candidates. It was still shining at the 2008 Taipei Literature Festival organized by the Taipei City Government’s Department of Cultural Affairs, topping the festival’s list of the 10 must-read books by Taiwanese writers for residents as chosen by more than 30,000 local readers.

Born in Guangxi province in mainland in July 1937, the first year of the Second Sino-Japanese War, Pai was destined to lead a life of change and uncertainty in his early years. Seven years later, when the Japanese invasion of mainland expanded inland from the coastal areas, Pai’s family was forced to move from to . After the Japanese defeat in 1945, the Pai family drifted through and , finally moving to as the Chinese Civil War raged. The family eventually settled in in 1952, three years after the communists declared rule over the mainland and Pai’s father, Pai Chung-hsi (1893-1966), a renowned general in the Kuomintang (KMT) army, joined the relocation of the KMT government to .

World of Influence

Pai’s experiences in mainland , especially in and , were to have a great influence on the content of his writing. He decided on a literary career after starting a new and stable life in , where he spent his high school and university years. Pai left for the in 1963 to work toward a master’s degree in literary theory and creative writing at the highly regarded Writers’ Workshop at the . Two years later he began his 29-year career of teaching Chinese literature at the of at , from which he retired in 1994. He has continued to live in the since his retirement, but throughout his career the city of has never been far from his thoughts. In fact, even the stories in Taipei People  were created after he left .

The author’s life has been of great significance to his career also because of his undergraduate studies at ’s (NTU) Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures. During this period he read a large amount of Western literature and in 1958, while still a student, he published his first story. The work, Madame Ching, appeared in Literature, a literary magazine started by Hsia Chi-an, his teacher and mentor at NTU. Two years later Pai himself founded Modern Literature with several of his classmates. “This periodical was unique for its systematic translation and introduction of literary theories from the West and foreign writers to . Even today few literary magazines can equal Modern Literature in this respect,” says Chen Fang-ming, director of NCCU’s Graduate Institute of Taiwanese Literature.

Pai’s long-time friend Yin Dih, the pen name of Ko Ching-hua, was initially a writer of fiction and essays and one of the loyal readers of Modern Literature. “I learned about different ways to develop a story after I started to read the magazine from its first issue,” says the founder of Elite Publishing Co., which previously published only works of prose. Yin reveals that his interest in reading and writing poetry since the 1990s also owes much to Pai, who told him a literary publisher should not ignore poetry. With Pai urging him to make a change, Yin finally began publishing poetic works and later even began writing poetry. Elite Publishing is now a major publisher of local poetry in .

“We grew up reading this magazine,” NCCU’s Chen, 61, says of those in ’s literary circle from his generation. He specifically refers to a great effort in Modern Literature’s early years to introduce local readers to T.S. Eliot (1888-1965), a major English-language poet and figure in modernist literature and New Criticism in the West. According to Chen, such an introduction had a great impact both on local literary writers, especially poets such as Yu Kuang-chung, as well as on the approaches adopted by local literary critics.

Flourishing after the First World War (1914-1918), modernist works are known for their subversion of literary conventions, for example, by violating the coherence of narrative language and experimenting with forbidden subject matters. In general, accompanying the trend was New Criticism, calling for a close reading of the text itself, as opposed to historicism, which advocates for literary reviews to refer to extra-textual sources such as historical contexts and biographies. Adherents of New Criticism think once an author completes a literary work, it should take on “a life of its own” and be subject to the reader’s interpretations.

Modern Literature was of great significance to ’s literary circles also because many major Taiwanese writers published their early works in the magazine, including its founders themselves. “Without being published in this magazine, you were unlikely to become an important writer in the 1960s. Approval by the magazine was just like an admission ticket [to the circle of elite writers],” Chen says. The magazine folded in 1973 because of financial problems, was restarted in 1977, but was closed down for good in 1984 for the same reason, although Pai had been providing regular financial assistance from abroad. In total, the magazine published 206 pieces of fiction created by 70 writers and more than 200 poems by authors from various groups of poets.

Modern Literature played a role in the history of Taiwanese literature, but it is Pai’s literary creations that are best known by the public. “Pai shows his great compassion for mankind in his stories, in which the reader is often stunned by the fate of characters, who end up as desolate souls,” says Yu Tian-cong, a professor at NCCU’s Graduate Institute of Taiwanese Literature. All the major protagonists in Taipei People moved to from mainland with the KMT government around 1949. Many of them face the loss of youth or of past glory while trying one way or another to relive their old memories, from a “taxi dancer”--a paid dance partner--from to a grade-school teacher from an eminent family. “Pai has created for us such unforgettable characters struggling against their fate,” Yu adds.

Such a theme of the good old days giving way to cruel reality is not uncommon in literary masterpieces, such as the Chinese classic Dream of the Red Chamber, which was completed in the 18th century and depicts the fall of an important family. Actually Pai has been a big fan of this tome since he first read it at the age of 10. Pai’s favorite American novelists, William Faulkner and Tennessee Williams, also created stories centered on nostalgic characters. To this day Pai still considers Faulkner the best American fiction writer.

Sympathy and Success

Pai’s great sympathy for lonely hearts also is shown in Crystal Boys, the openly gay writer’s sole novel to date. First serialized in Modern Literature in 1977 and republished in book form in 1983, the story is set in the 1970s and centers on a group of homosexual men seeking solace from each other in a society dominated by heterosexuals. In a time when was comparatively conservative toward and knew little about this minority group, Crystal Boys was without a doubt a pioneering work in the eyes of gay rights activists. Along with six of his 36 short stories, the novel was adapted for the big screen and when it was released in 1986 it became the first locally made movie explicitly dealing with gay issues. The 20-episode television series of Crystal Boys from 2003 received no less attention for its content and even won the award for best television drama series at that year’s Golden Bell Awards, ’s equivalent of the Emmy Awards.

Reflecting timeless conflicts between the present and the past, and between the individual and society, a distinguishing mark of Pai’s work is that it mixes Chinese and Western influences in terms of writing style. Stream of consciousness, a mode of narration first used by Western literary modernists, for example, manifests itself prominently in Wandering in the Garden, Waking from a Dream, one of the stories in Taipei People. “I also believe the jumping narrative style of some European movies I saw when I was young had an influence on my writings,” Pai says.

On the other hand, Christopher Lupke, assistant professor from the Department of Foreign Languages and Cultures at , points out Pai’s unique use of allusions to classic Chinese literature in his stories. “I think he is the first Chinese-language fiction writer since the May Fourth Movement in 1919 that uses them so widely--and so well,” the scholar said at the October seminar at NCCU. According to Lupke, for a long time Chinese writers avoided the use of allusions after Hu Shih (1891-1962), one of the leading figures of the May Fourth Movement, called for the “Eight No’s,” one of them being no use of Chinese allusions. For Hu, allusions should be avoided completely because they had been overused and become cliches in Chinese literature.

But it is Pai who again enables the reader to see the beauty of classic Chinese literary legacies employed in modern literature. Wandering in the Garden and Waking from a Dream are the titles of two installments from The Peony Pavilion, a Kunqu opera by playwright Tang Xianzu written in 1598. In 1966, Pai wrote the short story with a title that combines the titles of these two installments together, drawing on the opera’s legacy. Perhaps the best-known allusion employed by Pai is his use of the poem Raven Gown Alley by Tang dynasty (618-907) writer Liu Yuxi. The poem refers to the fall of two once glorious families of the East Jin dynasty (316-420) and Pai puts it at the beginning of his famous short story collection Taipei People, foreshadowing the modern-day versions of the story that the reader will find later in the book.

Despite being known as a great storyteller and, to a lesser degree, as an essayist, however, Pai has not been a prolific writer. "His works are definitely great in quality, but he could do more in terms of quantity," American Sinologist Christopher Lupke says. Pai has not published any works of fiction since Tea for Two, which made its debut in 2003. One of the two stories by the writer involving characters with AIDS--the other being Danny Boy--it is about a group of gay people offering comfort to each other in New York City in the face of the disease. Both stories show the author’s deep compassion for AIDS victims, and both were later included in New Yorker, a collection of six stories published in 2007. New Yorker also talks about the experience of members of the ethnic Chinese diaspora set mostly against the backdrop of the Big Apple, which is another very inspiring city for Pai.

Activist and Aesthete

Actually, Pai, the recipient of the 2003 National Award for Arts in literature, ’s highest honor for artists, has devoted his time and energy to several causes other than creative writing for a number of years. He has been calling on ’s society to fight the spread of AIDS since the disease was first identified in the in the early 1980s. “The suffering of the AIDS victims was just too much. It was just like the end of the world. The smell of panic was in the air,” Pai says of the first years of the outbreak and the excruciating fight against the disease he has witnessed in the .

In the mid-1980s saw its first reported case of AIDS and since then Pai has tried to do his part fighting the disease, for example, by giving speeches and promoting charity sales. “I tell people about the threat of the disease whenever I have the chance,” says Pai, who is also concerned about the spread of AIDS in mainland . “The interactions of the two sides are quite close. Caring about mainland people is virtually caring about Taiwanese people,” he says.

Meanwhile, a major artistic pursuit that has claimed much of Pai’s attention for a long time is Kunqu opera. “This art form is just so sophisticated, so beautiful,” exclaims the writer, who was impressed by the art at age 10 when he saw a Kunqu performance in . “I couldn’t appreciate the beauty of its lyrics then, but the mere music and movements of the performers just fascinated me.”

Pai loves to watch many kinds of opera including opera, which is younger than Kunqu and better known in the West, but he says none of them equals Kunqu. He first revealed his deep interest in Kunqu with the release of the short story Wandering in the Garden, Waking from a Dream, where the reader sees veteran Kunqu performers from the mainland getting together at a dinner party in Taipei. In 1979 Pai began thinking about adapting his story for the stage and in 1982 Taipei saw one of the biggest cultural events in Taiwan that year as the city hosted 10 performances of a stage play written by Pai based on the original story.

Kunqu opera originated in the Suzhou region of Jiangsu province in mainland China more than 500 years ago. In 2001, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization recognized the significance of Kunqu--one of the oldest forms of Chinese opera still performed--and listed it as a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity. Pai’s passion for the art form increased after the staging of his play, in which Kunqu was actually sung.

New Pavilion

In 1984 Pai tried his hand at the production of an opera, The Peony Pavilion, which was performed in Taipei by Taiwan-based Peking opera artists. Eight years later Pai took the production to the next level, this time using professional Kunqu artists from mainland China. “It was sold out for each of the four consecutive performances,” says Chen Fang-ying, associate professor of theater arts at Taipei National University of the Arts. “It attracted not only old fans of Kunqu and people in the art circle, but many young people who had had no idea about Chinese opera, not to mention Kunqu.” The production was later staged in New York City and Paris.

Pai’s more recent “Young Lovers’ Edition” of The Peony Pavilion from 2004 has won an even wider audience. The new version employs professional young performers from Suzhou, whose real ages match those of the characters in the story, as well as Taiwanese experts responsible for lighting, stage design and costume design. “The actors and musicians are from mainland China, where Kunqu has its roots, but Taiwan has a strong concept of modern theater. This is a perfect example of cross-strait cooperation on cultural affairs,” Pai says. Since its premiere in Taipei, this recent version of the production has been performed more than 100 times at venues worldwide including mainland China, California and Athens, Greece. It was also performed in London in June 2008, winning approval from audiences there including British art critic Donald Hutera, who called the work “at heart a beautiful and curious spectacle” in his review for The Times newspaper.

A celebrity fan of Kunqu opera, Pai now considers himself a lifetime volunteer in the task of securing corporate sponsorships and promoting this cultural legacy worldwide. In the future he hopes to modernize more works from the Kunqu repertoire including Romance of the West Chamber, a classic work written in the Yuan dynasty (1271-1368), on the long road to revitalizing the unique art form. Pai’s newest production, a modern version of The Jade Hairpin, made its world premiere in Suzhou in November 2008 and is scheduled to be staged in Taipei in the middle of this year.

Meanwhile, Pai’s love for literature and creative writing has never ceased and he is currently writing a biography of his father. But readers want more from this talented writer, often asking him when he is going to create more fictional stories. “As the Chinese saying goes, one’s life really only begins at the age of 70. We have high hopes for you,” NCCU professor Yu Tian-cong said to Pai at the 2008 seminar in Taipei, a remark that caused the writer to smile even more broadly than usual.

Write to Oscar Chung at oscar@mail.gio.gov.tw