The Fig Tree: Memoirs of a Taiwanese Patriot by Wu Zhuoliu


The Fig Tree: Memoirs of a Taiwanese Patriot
Title : The Fig Tree: Memoirs of a Taiwanese Patriot
Author :
Rating :
ISBN : 1403321507
ISBN-10 : 9781403321503
Language : English
Format Type : Paperback
Number of Pages : 328
Publication : Published August 20, 2002

Pioneering writer on the complexity and ambiguity of the Taiwanese identity, humanist and moderate Wu Zhuoliu (1900-1976), a Taiwanese Hakka, looks back over his life from the perspective of the 28 February 1947 massacres, describing his rural childhood in the Japanese colony of Taiwan, his growing political consciousness as a teacher in the island's Japanese school system and his traumatic realization, after a war-time visit to China, that the idealized 'motherland' was no more his home than Japan was. An indictment of the colonial experience and of Chiang Kai-shek's repressive Nationalist government in pre-democratic Taiwan, The Fig Tree chronicles Wu's, almost reluctant, espousal of a separate Taiwanese identity. Valuable additions to this translation by Duncan Hunter are commentaries by Jean-Pierre Cabestan, Director of the Hong Kong-based French Centre for Research on Contemporary China - How open-ended is Taiwan's future? - and the late Helmut Martin, formerly Professor of Chinese Language and Literature at the Ruhr University, Bochum, Germany -Wu Zhuoliu's Acts of resistance against repression and oblivion. These, together with the text itself, the chapter notes and international bibliography, make The Fig Tree essential reading for all students of Taiwan, issues of culture and identity, and of China/Taiwan relations.

The Fig Tree: Memoirs of a Taiwanese Patriot Reviews

  • Peter A

    This is a personal memoir of a Taiwanese journalist and novelist, who grew up when Taiwan was a colony of Japan, taught school in Taiwan, had the opportunity to work in Japanese controlled Nanjing, and later began working as a journalist. He wrote at least one novel under Japanese rule, “Orphan of Asia.” In that fictional novel he reflects many of the tensions he described in this book, the resistance by Taiwanese to Japanese rule, the longing for becoming reunited with “motherland” of China, and the disillusionment of the China he experienced.

    In this book he also wrote about the 228 incident/massacre (Feb 28, 1947) when China was governing Taiwan, and the huge lost opportunity for China to win the hearts of the Taiwanese people, who were enthusiastic for being the model Chinese province that could reflect the three principles set down by Sun Yat Sen. The three principles of the people are summarized as nationalism, democracy, and the livelihood of the people (see reference below). However, the Chinese administrators and soldiers saw the Taiwanese as “enemies”, having been colonized by the Japanese. Moreover, the Chinese administrators and soldiers facilitated corruption and projected the sense that they were conquerors and were owed anything they wanted.

    This memoir nicely portrays the dilemma and evolution of thinking of many Taiwanese of no longer thinking of themselves as a part of China.

    The author has a disarming style of writing, laying bare his self-perceived weaknesses to resisting both Japanese and Chinese, demonstrating a strong moral backbone, and at times portraying a person who opening defends ideals, even at the cost of personal loss.

    The book also offers penetrating insights into the times. For example, when the Japanese in Taiwan were reduced to second class citizens after the loss, he states that “Only those who have lived through it can know the utter misery that war inflicts on the defeated. Its effects cannot be understood vicariously through explanation or description.” Observations like this one and others transcend the specific events.

    He has a chapter titled “The Fig Tree”, which covers part of his time in China and his return to Japanese controlled Taiwan. With his disillusionment of China and knowing the inequity in Taiwan between Japanese and Taiwanese, he had to decide how we would express his feelings. His approach seems to have been to “be like the fig tree, blooming only where it cannot be seen.” It is thus how he wrote his novel “Orphan of Asia”, fearing that if the Japanese read the pages, he would lose his life.

    This edition has a nice set of notes about people or terms in bold in the book. The translator seems to have taken a hand at some editing of the original Chinese version into this edition.

    FB: This is a solid contribution to understanding the transformation of Taiwanese thinking from colonialism or reunion with China to a self-aware, self-governed people, full of insights, and examples of feelings, through his writing, poems, and news articles.


    Wu Zhuoliu

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wu_Chuo...

    Three Principles of the People:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_P....)