Lin Chinli, Associate Professor, Department of Taiwan Culture, Languages, and Literature, National Taiwan Normal University

Turtle Mountain Island

Poem by Huang Chunming

Translated by Robert Fox

Turtle Mountain Island

Whenever a Lanyang ¹  boy leaves on a train

And gazes out the window at you

It’s hard to tell if the sorrow in the air

Is yours, or his

Turtle Mountain Island

When a Lanyang boy is away

He’s a dreaming insomniac

Dreaming of the Zhuoshui River

Dreaming of Typhoons Pamela and Bess ² 

Dreaming of you, Turtle Mountain Island

A city doctor taught him to count sheep

One sheep, two sheep, three sheep

Four sheep Zhuoshui River, five sheep Typhoon Pamela

Six sheep Turtle Mountain Island

Turtle Mountain Island

Whenever a Lanyang boy comes home on a train

And gazes out the window at you

It’s hard to tell if the joy in the air

Is yours, or his

Huang Chunming is Taiwan’s best-known nativist writer. The majority of his works portray society’s small potatoes, denizens of tiny farming villages and sprawling cities. Huang excels at depicting the culture shock and disorientation of rural people who have relocated to urban areas. His poem “Turtle Mountain Island” is anothermanifestation of that theme, portraying thesorrow of a youth who leaves the countryside for the city, and his joy upon returning home.

Located approximately ten kilometers off Taiwan’s northeast coast, Turtle Mountain Island is clearly visible from the Ilan County shoreline. If traveling from Taipei by train, after passing through numerous mountain tunnels, the vast Ilan plain and the boundless Pacific Ocean come into view, with Turtle Mountain Island rising majestically up from the sea. Because of its distinctive geography, the island has become a symbol of Ilan.

The three-stanza poem personifies Turtle Mountain Island. Two “people” appear in the first stanza, “you” – Turtle Mountain Island – and “he,” a youth from Ilan County. The poem achieves intimacy by personifying the island, as if only “you” can truly understand what “he” is feeling. In this verse the young man is leaving home, thus the mood is somber, the lines “It’s hard to tell if the sorrow in the air / Is yours, or his” suggesting that the island is grieving the boy’s departure.

In the second stanza the young wanderer is far from home and unable to fall asleep because he’s thinking of the surging Zhuoshui River, fearsome typhoons, and Turtle Mountain Island, which he yearns for night after night. Although a doctor teaches him to count sheep as an antidote to insomnia, what really eases the pain of sleeplessness are the river, the typhoons, and the island that areetched in his memory. 

The third stanza echoes the first, but now the young man is returning home, his heart jumpint for joy. When he gazes out the train window at Turtle Mountain Island, it’s as if his happiness has infected the isle, which is like friend and family to him, and it too is joyously celebrating his return. To a certain degree, the poem reflects Huang Chunming’s personal experience. As a youth, Huang left Ilan to pursue studies in southern Taiwan. But the feelings the poem describes – the sorrow of leaving and the joy of returning – offera psychological portrait ofcountless others who have left hearth and home for school or work.

¹Taiwan’s Ilan area is also known as “Lanyang.”

²“Typhoon Pamela” and “Typhoon Bess” struck northeastern Taiwan in 1961 and 1952 respectively.

Xu Xiuhui

Huang Chunming was born in the Yilan County town of Luodong in 1935. Known for his stories of local life, Huang has a wealth of experience and many talents, having worked as elementary school teacher, journalist, advertising planner, television producer, playwright, film director, and as writer and director for a children’s theater group. He has won the Wu Sanlian Literary Award, the China Times Literary Award, and the National Award for Arts.

Much of Huang’s fiction portrays ordinary people and local customs. Huang lost his mother when he was eight and was raised by his grandmother, who was a marvelous storyteller. The influence is telling, as Huang is also adept at using the magic of language to tell the tales of insignificant people. Although at school he was seen as a problem student, by immersing himself in the literature of writers such as Chekhov, Shen Congwen, and Ba Jin, Huang broke free from his feelings of self-pity and began writing. In 1962 he contributed to the United Daily News supplement for the first time, and with the encouragement of editor Lin Haiyin he embarked on a literary career. On an introduction from Qi Dengsheng, he started to work with the Literary Quarterly, where he later served as editor.

The uniqueness of Huang’s works is that he often does not merely portray the life and experience of his protagonists but shows them in their social context, telling contemporary stories against a backdrop of real social mores. In other words, he writes contemporary short fiction through the traditional story-telling medium. He also lays great stress on the subtle representation of the relation between the psychological and the behavioral development of his characters. Huang enjoys ridiculing the nonentities who are his characters, laughing at them for their absurd, ridiculous, and trivial plights and actions; yet his real target is not the characters themselves but the social problems that have brought them to such a miserable pass. His best-known short-story collections include The Sandwich Man (1969), Gong (1974), Sayonara, Goodbye (1974), Set Free (1999), and The Railway Platform without Time (2009). His essay collections include Native Suite (1976), Waiting for a Flower’s Name (1989), and Muck Teacher (2009).

In addition to fiction and essays, Huang Chunming has also produced fairytale picture books for children, manga (comic books), and children’s plays. Publications include the manga Wang Shanshou and Niu Jin (1990) and the children’s book series Huang Chunming’s Fairytales (1993). In 1994 he set up the Big Fish children’s theater group and has written and directed stage plays for children including The Emperor Who Loved Sweets (1999), Cosmetic Surgery (2004), and The Little Hunchback (2005). Huang also set up the Lucky Alley Workshop in Yilan to compile material for the Visual Encyclopedia of Yilan County. He hopes to pass on his cultural experience and memories of Taiwan through active involvement in community building and fieldwork. He has also written and published librettos for Taiwanese operas such as Du Zichun (2001) and The New Legend of the White Snake (2003–2005).

This excerpt is taken from the Encyclopedia of Taiwan; for the entire Chinese article, please visit: http://nrch.culture.tw/twpedia.aspx?id=2296