臺灣文學虛擬博物館

Some Malaysian-Chinese students who study in Taiwan already have an artistic bent, while others become infected by the writing bug only after they arrive. These Malaysian-Chinese writers born overseas have given rise to what some observers have called “Malaysian Chinese literature in Taiwan”—Taiwan’s tropical literature scene.
 

Ed., Chen Dawei, Selection of Contemporary Malaysian Chinese Poetry: 1990-1994.

 

Li Yongping, Chronicle of Jiling.

By the early 1960s, Huang Huaiyun, Liu Qiyu, and Zhang Han, the first of Malaysian-Chinese writers in Taiwan, had already published their poetry. Wang Runhua, Lin Lü, and Chen Huihua, all Members of the Constellation Poetry Society, had made a reputation for themselves while living in Malaysia and in the early 1960s after they came to Taiwan they became actively involved in Taiwan’s modern poetry community. The Society’s publication, Constellation (星座), published a number of poetry collections of its membership, creating the first library of Malaysian Chinese literature in Taiwan. At the end of 1973, Wen Ruian, Fang Ezhen, Huang Hunxing, and Zhou Qingxiao, members of the Sirius Poetry Society, came to Taiwan for graduate study and then formed the Devine Land Poetry Society and the Young China Journal Co., created a “Chinese” literary “imagined community” and promoted the concept of a “cultural China.”

In the mid 1970s the literary awards given by the China Times (中國時報) and United Daily News (聯合報) ushered in a the pre-1990s high tide of Taiwanese literature. Shang Wanyun, Li Yongping, Zhang Guixing, and Pan Yutong, all Malaysian-Chinese writers living in Taiwan, hit their peak at this time and in the 70s and 80s were constantly receiving literary awards. Books written by these four authors—Ah-lian the Silly Girl (癡女阿蓮), A Dayak Woman (拉子婦),Chronicle of Jiling (吉陵春秋), Crouching Tiger (伏虎), Sons and Daughters of Ke Shan , (柯珊的兒女), When Flies With the Wind O’er a Bed of Roses (因風飛過薔薇), and Last Night’s Stars (昨夜星辰)—remain important works today. The literary awards given by the China Times and United Daily News also led to the sudden appearance on the Taiwanese literary scene in the 1990s of Malaysian Chinese writers Lin Xingqian, Huang Jinshu, Chen Dawei, and Zhong Yiwen as well as Li Zishu (not living in Taiwan), writing a new page in the story of Malaysian Chinese literature in Taiwan. Following the “long houses” of the Pulau rain forests in Borneo, the rubber tree lanterns and the villages of the peninsula became the land of the tropics for Taiwanese literature.
 

Zhong Yiwen, Wild Malaysia.

 

Huang Jinshu, Dream and Swine and Aurora.

Over the last 20 years Li Yongping and Zhang Guixing have published The Falcon (海東青), Zhu Ling in Wonderland (朱鴒漫遊仙境), The End of the River (大河盡頭), Elephants (群象), and Monkey’s Cup (猴杯), classics of Malaysian Chinese literature. Since 2000, Li Tianbao (not living in Taiwan) tells stories of Old Kuala Lumpur in the style of Eileen Zhang ; Xin Jinshun, Gong Wanhui, He Shufang, Mu Yan, Lü Yutao, and Xian Wenguang— names from Sabah, “the land below the wind,”—have become another focus of readers’ attention as a result of their having won awards for literature.

Malaysian Chinese literature in Taiwan has created a sure footing on Taiwan soil, and academic discussions and the establishment of representative models has only added to this development. Writers like Lin Jianguo, Huang Jinshu, Chen Dawei, Zhong Yiwen, and Gao Jiaqian have taught at institutions of higher education for many years, and their many articles on Malaysian Chinese literature in Taiwan have provided us a great deal of research material. In addition, Huang, Chen, and Zhong have put a great deal of effort into compiling and editing a selection and reader of Malaysian Chinese literature in Taiwan and also have guided graduate students in their theses on the subject.