Wintry Night (Modern Chinese Literature from Taiwan)
To an American reader, Li Qiao's three-volume Taiwanese epic, the first and third volumes of which are translated here, references some surprisingly familiar episodes: frontiersmen grabbing land and clearing forest, aboriginal tribes taking scalps, and unscrupulous moneymen cheating the settlers. Like the Wild West, Taiwan was also being settled in the 19th century--in this case by the Hakka, a mainland Chinese ethnic group. The first volume, Wintry Night, describes the travails of founding the village of Fanzai Wood, focusing on the Pengs, a family of farmers headed by patriarch Peng Aqiang. The Pengs have purchased young Dengmai from her family as a bride for their youngest son, but when he dies, Liu Ahan, a soldier, marries her and thereby enters the Peng family. The story weaves an account of Ahan's coming of age with the history of Fanzai Wood's struggle with typhoons, the crops and Ye Atian, an unscrupulous landlord. The novel ends with the Japanese invasion of Taiwan in 1895, which provokes a Taiwanese rebellion; Ahan serves in that unsuccessful struggle. The third book, The Lone Lamp, begins with Ahan's son, Liu Mingji, and his friend, Peng Yonghui, being inducted as Taiwanese "volunteers" into the Japanese army in the 1940s. Ahan is dead, and Dengmei is now an old woman. The two young men are sent to the Philippines and witness the horror of the Japanese occupation. Perhaps because the translators have abridged these novels, important passages--for instance, the fight between Ye Atian and Peng Aqiang--are confusing. Still, the story illuminates and personalizes a neglected historical epoch. Balcom, in addition to translating, has provided a helpful introduction.Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to theHardcoveredition.