Taiwan Today

It is April. Butterflies are pollinating everything insight. Cats are caterwauling. The world reaches puberty—four-legged animals, eight-legged ones, monsters and ghosts alike, and I don’t know what else all feel the sexual im­pulse. The air is scented with the smell of propagation. “Ah!”—the cry comes from Hsieh A-man. She is nineteen years old, in the April of her life, but hasn’t felt the stealthy arrival of puberty...

Thus begins one of the most popular romance novels in Taiwan, where puberty is not the only thing to afflict teenagers: Romance novels by the library-load are capturing the hearts of many a young maiden. According to a report done by The Journalist, a local weekly magazine, about 90 percent of those who read these books are girls in the 17 to 20 age group, most of them students. And not only the readers are young—nowadays many of the writers themselves are under 20. Brought up on a diet of romantic fiction, they know exactly what their readers want and they churn it out with amazing speed. It is not uncom­mon for a writer to produce a novel a month—300-odd pages, 90,000 words—and approximately a hundred of them are published each month. Overall the pub­lishing industry is not having an easy time of it at present, but at least the soft roseate glow of romance fiction sheds some light in the encircling economic gloom.

The novel quoted above is entitled Less Sacred Romance and is in the main­stream of a genre that strikes serious liter­ary observers as a good deal less than sacred. The leading character, Hsieh A­-man, is a large-mouthed, flat-chested, plain-faced girl who has spent two years in a cram school preparing for the senior-high entrance exam, knowing it holds the key to her future. Disaster strikes: she only man­ages to make it into a private school of dubious repute. But do not despair, for this ugly duckling is going to come out of it better than the average swan. She becomes a famous singer in a piano bar and wins the precious love of her boss.

Now all this strikes a responsive chord in many a trembling teenage breast. A lot of girls are going through exam hell like Hsieh A-man, and many of them lack confidence against a media-generated background of bosomy, long-legged beau­ties. And they can take comfort from A-man’s story, because they too long for true love. Chiang Hsin-I (江欣儀),15, is also studying for the senior high exam, and her comments are typical. “When I read ro­mance novels, I forget about exam pres­sures,” she says. “I feel as though I’ve become the woman in the novel. It’s like I’m living through a real live love affair.”

For big-time achievers, the people who craft these perfumed effusions are a remark­ably reticent bunch. They invariably use pseudonyms and avoid the media. For some of them, authorship is a part-time occupa­tion, and not even those in their immediate circle know they write romances. Yin Chen-I (尹晨伊), who started doing ro­mances while she was a college student and has published thirteen novels even though still in her early twenties, knows her own mind on this. “I won’t do TV interviews,” she declares. “If my friends knew that I wrote romance novels they wouldn’t confide in me. They’d worry that I might betray them in my books. And many of my readers idol­ize me. If they saw me in person, they’d be disappointed.” She may be right. At one time Sitak Publishing Co. put their novelists’ photos on the dust jackets, but they had to stop because of negative reader response.

These novels may be romantic in con­tent, but they spell big business for the book trade. The major outlets for this kind of fiction, apart from conventional book­shops, are the island’s approximately 2,000 book-rental stores, which operate along the same lines as video-rental outfits. A romance novel retails for US$8, but a book-rental store will let you keep one for two weeks for a mere sixty cents. Such stores stock comics and other popular nov­els, but romance will invariably occupy one whole wall. These outlets are espe­cially popular with teenagers of both sexes, and are often filled with boys busy reading comics and tales of action and adventure—but no girls. “Girls always take the books home,” says the owner of one book-rental store, located in the heart of Taipei’s cram school district. “They never read them in the store like the boys do.”

With such a huge market just waiting to be tapped, it is not surprising that many readers attempt to write their own romances. The approximately one hundred romance novels published each month account for less than 10 percent of all the unsolicited manuscripts submitted to publishers. Those with artistic leanings also try their luck: each week, Wan Sheng Publishing Co. receives four or five uncommissioned cover designs featuring innocent-looking, pretty girls. (So far, none of them have ever been accepted.)

But some writers derive much more than financial satisfaction from their work. Often a kind of feminine bond is formed. Yin Chen-i plucks a letter at random from the pile of fan mail in front of her and reads from it with a smile: “Your romances are my Bible. I read them like a devout Chris­tian every morning when I get up, and every night before I go to sleep.” She re­ceives about eight hundred letters each month, mostly from teenage girls. “Even though I answer each letter very briefly, it still takes a great deal of time,” Yin says. “Some readers share their secret love affairs with me. Some ask my opinion about troubled relationships. We become, in our special way, close friends.”

A crop of new writers inevitably means fresh topcis and different directions. In the seventies and eight­ies, the main characters typically came from the leisured and moneyed classes of society. Nowadays, however, the protago­nist is just as likely to be a bartender, gang leader, reporter, saleswoman, pizza deliv­ery boy, or ad company executive. Plot lines used to harp on the same old themes­—a couple’s struggle with family members for the freedom to wed despite an earlier arranged marriage, or perhaps in the teeth of class discrimination. The romance nov­els of the nineties break much new ground, but they too have their tried and tested conventions.

A recurring character in more recent novels is the New Woman. Yin Chen-i scoffs at the female characters who popu­lated older works. “They were so submis­sive,” she says. “They always sacrificed themselves for love. I don’t like all this love-me-or-I-will-die stuff. The women in my novels must be smart. They know what they want and have dominant personali­ties.” Today’s heroine is much more likely to be a tough businesswoman who is at­tractive to men but relentless toward them, and determined to give those selfish guys a hard time. And it seems that the tougher women are, the more men love them. Pas­sions of Strangers, by Yeh Hsiao-Ian (葉小嵐), ends with a young woman going to America in pursuit of her business career, pausing only to dump two men, both in love with her, who dared to hurt her best friends.

Some authors go even further and daringly toy with controversial gender issues. For example, The Dragon and the Phoenix Exchange Roles, by Yeh Hsiao­-Ian, paints a portrait of confusion and chaos generated by transvestism, and Love Me, Don’t Call Me, by Hsueh Fang-nan (雲芳楠), tells the story of a gay male pros­titute who is converted to heterosexuality.

But however outrageous the subject matter may be, it must remain firmly rooted in social reality. “Authors must not attempt to go against conventional val­ues,” says Grace Yang (楊孟華), chief editor of Lin Po Publishing Co. Almost without exception, happy endings occur, and the heroine’s struggle to achieve self­-esteem finds its resolution in marriage. Yin Chen-I's Pink Lady revolves around con­flicts between a chauvinistic man and a woman who possesses supernatural pow­ers. Love triumphs in the end, and the cou­ple live happily ever after. Feminists dislike this book, because although at a major turning point the man softens toward the woman, he only does so because he discovers that she is still a virgin.

The author dismisses the criticism. “I know that romance novels are accused of poisoning feminist consciousness,” she says. “People wonder why romances can’t be more radical, when both the writers and their audience are female. But they’re putting too much responsibility on romance novels, which are entertainment, not serious literature. Readers want something readily digestible, not something they have to rack their brains over. They aren’t likely to confuse novels with reality anyway.”

“Michelle,” now in graduate school, agrees. She has been reading romances since she was an elementary school student. “I read them as an escape from bor­ing and disappointing reality,” she admits. “If they presented reality,” I simply wouldn’t be interested.” Alex Chen (陳健真), vice general manager of Cresent Cultural Enterprise, is not surprised by this attitude. “In this competitive society, peo­pIe need something beautiful,” he says. “People need happy endings. Romance novels provide us with dreams and hope, the two things that keep people going.”

It has reached the point where the far­ther removed from reality a novel is, the better it sells. A recent trend is to set the story in the remote past. Yin Chen-i has written four such novels. “I just keep the historical details fuzzy,” she says. “That way I can create plot freely, without worrying about the constriction of time and space. I can superimpose whatever idealized vision people have upon the past.” Her fans relate to this. “I love your historical novels,” one of them wrote. “The women are so graceful and ten­der, and the men are just the kind of heroes I admire.” Some writers are even standing this concept on its head and setting their novels in the future.

The editorial departments of the major publishing houses ensure that romances continue to reflect a strictly idealized world. Wang Ta-ming (王達明), general manager of Wan Sheng Publishing, lays down the ground rules. “We bear in mind that our readers are mostly teenagers,” he says. “Sexual descriptions should be indirect and ‘beautified,’ although we do receive letters from housewives complaining that the sex scenes aren’t explicit enough. Abnormal sexual relations like incest are absolutely out.” Romance novels present a sanitized version of society, in other words. For instance, at a time when sexual harassment is a hot topic, Love Af­termath, by Sha Man (莎蔓), centers on the pure love of a boss for his secretary.

This is one reason why translated romances are not as popular as those writ­ten by local authors. Readers find foreign geography and culture hard to digest, and there is simply too much raw sex. Few readers will bother to get past the picture on the dust jacket—locally produced works feature representations of innocent girls, while those from abroad depict half­-naked men and women. America is the main source of these translated novels. Grace Yang reads Romantic Times, a New York-based magazine that carries news of latest publications, in search of titles suit­able for acquisition. “In America, romance novels are for adults,” she says. “There, if a single woman sits alone in a bar drink­ing, and she meets a man, and they’re at­tracted to each other, we all know what’s going to happen next. In Taiwan, our read­ers would find that disgusting.”

Given the cultural background, it is hardly surprising that Harlequin Enter­prises, a prominent international publisher of romance fiction, lasted for less than three years in Taiwan. According to Alex Chen of Cresent Cultural Enterprise, Harlequin set aside US$2 million a year for advertising, but then made the mistake of indiscriminately importing all the nov­els its Australian parent company pub­lished, without attempting to select works that were compatible with the local culture.

Publishers and books-rental storeowners are unanimous that more than 90 percent of romance read­ers are women. What about the remainder? “We hope that more men will read romances,” Grace Yang says. “Right now, boys watch blue movies and girls read romance novels. As a result, there’s a dis­crepancy between their perceptions and expectations about love and sex. If more boys start to read romance novels, this will change.” She gives an example. “Chinese chivalric novels feature ancient warriors fighting each other. Now, romance novel­ists are producing a feminist version of that, substituting love for the essentially male revenge theme. This will be a new reading experience for those male readers who are used to chivalric novels.”

Huang Chun-jung (黃俊榕), 15, has been reading romances for four years, and he is perhaps one of the new generation of readers that Yang has in mind. “Before I started reading romance novels, I used to go for Chinese chivalric novels,” he says, “and that was a man’s world. Now no­body’s writing Chinese chivalric novels anymore, so I started borrowing romances from girls in my class.” But he goes on to make another point. “At first I just felt cu­rious. Now I’ve discovered that girls can think, too. I’ve learned to respect their way of thinking. I discuss the stories with girls, and they’re interested. What I learned even helped me find a girlfriend.” And did they ride into the sunset together? “Uh-uh. We broke up.”

Huang is not alone in reading romance novels in an effort to understand how women think. Yin Chen-i has received let­ters from men who want to know how to get along with girls. “They can’t share their in­nermost feelings with their peers because they have to maintain a tough manly out­ward show,” she says. “So of course they turn to me for help. Some men are actually very sensitive, you know.”

Indeed, quite a few chaps with the req­uisite dose of sensitivity and delicacy have already turned their hands to writing ro­mances. At first they hid behind female pen names, hoping to overcome resistance from female readers, but now they fear­lessly use masculine pseudonyms. Chen Hsi-tung (陳希桐) is one of the few men in this field. “As a male writer, I still have a lot to learn about female psychology,” he says modestly. “For example, I once had to try and capture the feelings of a woman whose boyfriend was making her wait, and now I find I’ve become more considerate toward my girlfriend and more sensitive to her feelings.”

If there are more people out there like Chen, it seems that romantic novels may actually be having an effect, albeit a limited one, on society. And as a not­-so-ambitious Yin Chen-i says, “At least I make people think about these things. That's enough for me.”