Professor Guo Hengyu introduced me in German as a professor from Taiwan. I heard the term kultur mentioned frequently. Wasn’t just thinking about the last hundred years of Taiwan or even Chinese culture a sad thing? I was asked to introduce myself and talk about my class. I had been under the impression that I would be meeting only with those students taking my class, but I had to address the more than one hundred students in the department. I started by telling them about when I was born and how my young father had just transferred from Berlin to Heidelburg University to study philosophy, committed to understanding history and life so as to strengthen China through education. Everyone knew the situation of Taiwan, and those at the Free University in West Berlin could certainly understand what we represented and our cultural significance. The students I taught at NTU were like them in that they were young intellectuals pursuing freedom of thought. I hoped that I could really understand Germany and that they could really understand Taiwan. Later Professor Guo said that my talk had been well received and was a good start. Before leaving, I had shipped over three hundred volumes of Taiwan literature to Germany, which I was donating to the China Research Institute at the Free University. In each book, the library stamped: “Donated by Professor Chi Pang-yuan, 1985.”
My class focused on fiction, including Lai Ho’s “The Steelyard,” Wu Zhouliu’s “The Doctor’s Mother” and Asia’s Orphan, and Bai Xianyong’s Taipei People. In addition to works included in the anthology I had edited, I also included English translations of Yuan Qiongqiong’s “A Sky of One’s Own” and Xiao Sa’s My Son Hansheng. The school required that an outline be handed out at each week’s class. I taught the class in English, but had to supply the Chinese as well. The department asked Chen Huiwen to help out with interpreting into German when necessary. In our discussions we used German, English, and Chinese. Chen Huiwen had studied English twenty years earlier at Soochow University and had married Erik von Groeling, a young German studying Chinese at National Taiwan Normal University. She relocated to Cologne with her young husband, but he died unexpectedly during surgery. She went to Berlin and was living on a pension, taking care of a four-year-old and a one-year-old child. I felt sympathy and admiration for her. While I was in Berlin she looked after me both in class and outside, so we became good friends. She was also my guide in Berlin and made sure that I knew the real city.
After two weeks of class, I decided I wanted a place of my own, so Huiwen took me to see a number of advertised rooms, which is the best way to get to know a city. I was hoping for a desk and a garden window. I assumed that in Berlin, the old cultural capital, everybody read and studied, but what was surprising was that of the six or seven places we visited, not one had a desk. I was on the point of giving up when we visited a small shaded street and saw a little place set in a garden. The downstairs had two large rooms, with a kitchen and a dining table. Entering the first room, I saw a very large desk, and outside the window was a real garden. The rent was higher than for the other places, but this was what I really had in mind for Berlin. In the four months I was there, I watched as the various flowers in the flower beds went from bud to full bloom, and I came and went in the shade of trees. In all my life I never had such a restful environment, and on weekends I could hear the church bells near and far. I recall receiving a book from Lin Haiyin and writing back to her and saying that on Sunday the city was filled with the sound of bells. In her usual fashion, she replied immediately and said she wished she could go to Berlin.
On May 8, Professor Guo informed me that all the students in Berlin had to go see a documentary film titled The Fall of Berlin. I went to the Kurfürstendam downtown and saw that the street and bus stop in front of the KaDeWe Department Store I frequented were filled with protestors quietly holding up various placards, and down around the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church were a number of ardently impassioned speakers. The documentary film was exceptionally comprehensive and clear—covering from the time Hitler started inciting people to the start of the war—and contained important scenes from the war and the lives of the people. But most of the film was about the last days of the Nazis, their defeat on the battlefields of Europe, as well as the systematic bombing of Berlin, including the warnings issued before the bombings that if surrender wasn’t forthcoming, certain streets would be bombed. The film showed areas on the map with photos from before and after the bombings. It rained bombs, and street after street was reduced to rubble by the Allied planes. Ultimately about 60 percent of this once powerful capital was reduced to ruins. When the Allied forces entered the city on May 2, the survivors hid in basements. The Russian soldiers who first entered the city bayoneted and raped, the English who followed picked up the kids and fed them, while the Americans stood guard … the film was clear and detailed and one had to watch it, willing or not. It was a documentary the Germans had made for their descendants to watch.
I didn’t return to where I was staying until after dark. The whole place was dark because the landlady had had an asthma attack and been hospitalized. That night I sat alone recalling the scenes of death and destruction in the film, and I couldn’t help remembering those years when Chongqing was being bombed by the Japanese and the helplessness we felt. From seeing the map of the areas of Berlin that had been bombed, I realized that a new city had been built over the ruins! Were the bones of the last generation perhaps buried under my desk or bed? I was so scared, I couldn’t sleep for nights.
The cover story in Time magazine that week was about the fortieth anniversary of Berlin’s surrender. According to the editorial titled “There Is No Comparative Disaster,” the Russians buried two hundred thousand alive along the Elbe River, while two atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki before Japan surrendered. Both countries believed they had suffered the greatest disaster. But hadn’t the Jews suffered the most, with millions of deaths? In fact, disasters cannot be compared, because for each victim, his is the greatest.
Over the past half century innumerable books have been written about the suffering of the Jews, while there have been almost no detailed accounts of how the Chinese suffered during the eight years of war against Japan. After the Communists occupied the mainland in 1949, the Nationalists, who had borne the brunt of the fight against Japan, had to renounce their past if they were to manage to survive. The people and the soldiers who had been dying for their country had to face a second death and were forgotten after the regime change. And why hadn’t I, someone who had grown up during the war and had spent twenty years attending international literary exchange to promote “our Taiwan literature,” written an account of those years?
From then on, my question-and-answer exchanges with the students at the Free University took on deeper implications. When reading Wang Zhenhe’s “Little Lin Comes to Taipei,” they said that a person had to visit Berlin in order to deeply understand Germany’s recent history and that the wall, which was a tourist attraction, was nothing more than a symbol. I told them of my joy at first hearing the church bells of Berlin. Someone said that churches of many sects had been built on disaster sites, not just for the sake of the lost souls but also for atonement and as places to pray for peace. Look! There are so many churches in Berlin! After that, when I heard the church bells I no longer felt a sense of joy.
After the war, Berlin was reborn from the ruins. Trees were planted and death was covered over by a prosperous life. Real democracy was implemented in West Berlin, which was controlled by the United States and Britain, and there was political stability and economic prosperity. Germany’s one great hope was to recover as a great cultured nation, so many international cultural events were held there. Shortly after I arrived in Berlin, I saw ads on the street for the Horizon World Literature Conference and learned that a large delegation would be coming from mainland China. Before the conference, I received a message from Bai Xianyong saying that he, Chen Ruoxi, Chung Ling, Lee Ou-fan, and William Tay had all received invitations to represent Taiwan and the overseas Chinese. After they
arrived in Berlin, Profeesor Guo, Chen Huiwen, and I wholeheartedly received them; however, the organizers removed the talks and readings to be given by the five from the program. The names of the mainlanders were listed in the main hall, but not those from Taiwan, which angered us. Although the Free University first held a forum on Taiwan literature, circumstances dictated that the dozen or so mainland authors received all the attention. Berlin was like San Francisco in that everyone was curious about these writers fresh from behind the iron curtain.
After the 1990s, European research on Taiwan literature gradually shifted to research on the kultur of mainland China.
THE BRIDGE: INTRODUCING TAIWAN LITERATURE THROUGH TRANSLATION: THE CHINESE PEN
Even though I’d been involved in academic exchange, I had to first stabilize the footing of Taiwan literature. After my experience in Berlin in 1985, I began considering the present and future development of Taiwan literature from the perspective of a greater Europe. I was really shaken by something that happened at the annual PEN meeting of 1986 in Hamburg. The West German writer Günter Grass reproachfully roared at an East German writer who supported Russian Communist power: “Where is the conscience of literature there?” The 1992 meeting in Barcelona was used as something of a forum on the independence of the city from Spain. Half the documents that we received were in Catalan to signify that their ancient language was still alive. One of the most inspiring PEN meetings I attended took place in Czechoslovakia, where the theme of the meeting, which was presided over by the Czech President Havel, was “Nation, Ethnicity, Religious Tolerance, and Literature.” There was one panel discussion titled “Small Languages, Great Literatures” and another titled “How Much Do We Know About Ourselves?” This was the first time I had heard a distinction made between major and minor languages. It was also the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union that I heard writers—fifty of them—from countries that had regained their independence, and which, by resuming the use of their small languages instead of using Russian, had encountered new problems. Based upon their remarks, I authored a piece titled “Only the Cold Wind Hears My Voice,” but I didn’t explicitly state my concerns that the world of sinology had already started to shift its focus to mainland China, that important writers in Taiwan had stopped writing, that the tide of nativism was growing, and that the enthusiasm for writing in Chinese was missing. Would the day come when we would also find ourselves facing the unfavorable situation of a small language and a small literature? From then on, my concern for Taiwan literature was no longer simply a matter of encouraging and introducing it, but working to secure its future and position. In 1992, I formally took over the chief editorship of The Chinese PEN. For about ten years, I grappled with this problem of deepening the cultivation of Taiwan literature.
Since this English language quarterly was established in 1972, I had been a substantial consultant and, after editing the anthology, I had maintained a clear understanding of the development of Taiwan literature by continued reading. With the NTU Philosophy Department Incident (1973) and Zhao Tianyi being sent to the National Institute of Compilation and Translation, along with Ke Qingming taking over the editorship of Modern Literature, I developed a deeper understanding of nativist writers. At the time, poetry societies were popping up like bamboo shoots after a rain, and I was always a subscriber to their publications. Later, when making selections for the English quarterly, I maintained a fair attitude, holding no political position.
In a free world, writers didn’t need an association. Writing is an individual struggle and the literary arena is no arena, but just writers from time to time getting together to discuss things. The International PEN (now PEN International) was founded in London in 1921 by England and some European writers. PEN is an acronym for Poets, Essayists, Novelists. In 1924, the Chinese PEN was founded in Shanghai and became part of the larger organization. Those who started it included Lin Yutang, Hu Shi, Xu Zhimo, and others, and the first president was Cai Yuanpei. They started doing all sorts of cultural exchange, translation, author visits, and other groundbreaking work. Since very young I was a voracious reader and often read unforgettable things; for example, about how they invited the Indian poet Tagore to visit China, which fired my imagination.
During World War II, PEN member nations faced off against each other and cultural exchange came to a halt until 1946, when they resumed once again in neutral Sweden. The Chinese PEN resumed in Taiwan in 1953; the first president was Zhang Daofan and the second was Luo Jialun. In 1959, it rejoined the international association and members attended every annual conference. In 1970, Lin Yutang was elected president and the third Asian Writers Conference was convened in Taipei, with writers from Korea, Thailand, the Philippines, and other nations being invited, and a hundred or so writers from Taiwan attending. Wang Lan, Peng Ge, and Nancy Ing organized a vivid and dramatic event at the newly built Yuanshan Hotel, enhancing Taiwan’s prestige. Lin Yutang suggested that they have a journal for publishing English translations in order to build a bridge between East and West.
In the autumn of 1972, the first issue of The Chinese PEN was published. Nancy Ing, whose native language was English, served as chief editor, with Wang Lan and Peng Ge as editorial consultants. Nancy served as chief editor for twenty years, from 1972 to 1992. I followed for nine years, after which came Perng Ching-hsi, Zhang Huijuan, Kao Tian’en, and Yanwing Leung, all of whom were my younger colleagues at NTU. One other person served as assistant editor and secretary—for the first fifteen years it was Norma Liu Hsiao, followed by Sarah Jen-hui Hsiang. When the issues of the quarterly were mailed out, a work-study student was hired. Such “loneliness” would be inconceivable for a large publisher. For years, like clockwork, the quarterly has been published without missing an issue, making it the longest running periodical produced by any of the national PEN associations. Taiwan therefore has quite a reputation among the more than one hundred member nations.
Nancy Ing was among the first to translate Taiwan literature. In 1961, the Heritage Press published translations of fiction and new poetry. Nancy Ing was the editor of New Voices, a collection that included Bai Xianyong, Qiong Hong, Wang Wenxing, Chen Ruoxi, and Ye Shan (who later changed his pen name to Yang Mu), among others. She therefore had several years of experience before she edited the quarterly.
Nancy Ing’s name was synonymous with the quarterly: she made the selections, initially translated the poetry for every issue, sought out highly qualified translators, read the translation manuscripts, did the proofreading, and sent the edited proofs to the printer. In the third year of publication, she began using the artwork of Taiwan artists on the covers and also introduced them in the magazine, which proved another challenge for her. Wang Lan was a big help in this regard. After I took over, I had the help of friends like Lin Wenyue and Ding Zhenwan.
Nancy Ing’s beautiful blond, blue-eyed mother married her classmate Zhang Chengyou, and moved from Virginia to Hubei in 1917 (after arriving in Taiwan, he served as Minister of the Audit). Nancy graduated from the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at West China University in Chengdu in 1949 and came to Taiwan with her husband, Glyn T. H. Ing, who founded Continental Engineering Corporation. Abroad for meetings she always used her married name, but at home she was known by everybody simply as Nancy. She loved literature and occasionally wrote poetry of her own, publishing a collection of verse titled One Leaf Falls in 1971.
In 1972, I moved to Taipei from Taichung. By coincidence we lived in neighboring lanes and often bumped into each other on the street when she was walking her dog. She edited the quarterly and I was editing the anthology, so we had plenty to talk about. Basic topics of conversation included what works to translate, good English translators, the translation of specific words and phrases, layout, final product, and reader response, all topics of which we never tired.
Warm and optimistic, Nancy was always friendly even when busy. Every year before the annual PEN meeting, she would make sure that papers,
speeches, and discussion topics were ready. She also prepared gifts and at the conference venue would shake so many hands outstretched in friendship. After the Cultural Revolution, the China PEN of mainland China joined and on many occasions tried to have us expelled, but Nancy would take to the stage, her naturally warm smile having disappeared, and indignantly protect the rights of the free people of Taiwan to be represented. After Tiananmen in 1989, China stopped attending the annual meetings. With today’s political situation, national position will be broached, but the international friendship established by Nancy Ing and the other representatives, the longtime stability of the quarterly, and the organization’s professionalism all make the position of the Taiwan Chinese PEN unassailable. After the United States and the Republic of China broke off relations, Nancy was invited to do a TV program titled Talk About Taiwan in ten U.S. locations. With structured analysis and clear language, she was able to demonstrate the progress of Taiwan culturally, economically, and socially. The quarterly only helped to increase understanding. During those years, Nancy spoke a great deal for Taiwan in the Western world, but Taiwan was not a well-known place. Such contributions as well as her editorship of the quarterly were wholeheartedly supported by her husband. The income of the quarterly came from the few hundred overseas gift subscriptions provided by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Government Information Office, as no more than a hundred copies ever sold in the local bookstores. Most of the expenses for translating, printing, distribution, and salaries received the financial assistance of Glyn T. H. Ing. Originally the PEN office was housed in the Continental Engineering Corporation building, but after Glyn passed away, space was rented on Wenzhou Street. Just when things were becoming difficult, the Hao Ran Foundation stepped in and began providing financial support, keeping the quarterly going to this day.
The Great Flowing River Page 43