Shi Xiaofeng, Professor, Department of Chinese Literature, National Taiwan Normal University

“Military veterans’ literature” is a special category of writing that grew out of the Chinese Civil War, a struggle between Nationalist and Communist forces. When the Kuomintang (KMT) retreated to Taiwan in 1949, over one hundred and twenty thousand Mainland Chinese followed, among whom were some sixty thousand soldiers. Believing they would “Retake the Mainland” – as official dogma had it – these military men regarded Taiwan as a temporary stopping place, their drifters’ fate tied to the narrative of an imaginary homeland. But times changed and government policies relegated these homeless veterans to society’s lower echelons, where they led lonely lives, enduring fractured marriages, hard-pressed to earn a living. 

In the literature of the time there are many portrayals of veterans’ rootless lives, their exile and diaspora, their living conditions. Zhang Tuowu’s essay collection Horses and Men is the best known such work, while Sang Duozai, Chen Lie, Hu Taili, Lin Wenyi, Ku Ling and other also penned related writings. Writing essays, fiction, poetry, and reportage, Huang Kequan has turned out a great deal of work on the lives of old Mainland soldiers, vowing to complete a “veterans’” trilogy, which would included Two Hundred Jokes, Drifting with the Wind, as yet unpublished, and The People with Painted Eyebrows, a poetry collection currently in the works.

“Old Mainlander, for You I Write” (1993) is a group portrayal of the veterans different from Huang’s later works in which a single poem focuses on a single individual. The Chinese title phrase “old Mainlander” is lāu ōo-á – literally “old taro” – a Taiwanese (Holo) pejorative for low-ranking waisheng military men.  ¹

In the poem’s first verse Huang Kequan brings out his feelings for the old Mainlanders: “Implicated with memory, humanity, and history.” Born in 1950 on the battlefront island of Jinmen, Huang has a host of childhood memories of his interactions with the soldiers, the ordinary recollections a miniature of the era’s history. Thus, the poet begins by describing some of the soldiers he knew – Big Foot, Chen, Sarge, the medical officer, Old Jin – gradually moving on to portrayals of veterans sitting quietly in the street, playing chess in the park, collecting recyclables, burning themselves alive in protest, working as greeters in amusement parks, or prowling streets and alleys, horny and looking for sex; Huang even depicts blind veterans, soldiers living alone, and soldiers selling stinky tofu, beating copper wire, selling candy and gum, or scavenging recyclable trash to earn a living – everywhere the poet looks he sees these men, impoverished and alone, on the margins of society.

After sketching out the old soldiers collective image, Huang writes “I’ve decided to write a poem for each of you.” From here on the poet uses nonlinear imagery, poeticized sentence structures, and modernist techniques, touching on themes of diaspora, love, sex, and loneliness to reveal veterans’ inner cries. Today, many of these troubled lives are still being lived out, “but times have slowly turned away,” a source of deep pain for the poet. 

“Guilt and regret” are an important source of emotion in the work. Although the author is weary of guilt’s dark shadow, the concrete details he reveals in the poems are religious sentiments that take others’ pain as one’s own, the poetry especially moving its high degree of emotion and spirituality.

¹In the postwar ear Taiwanese (benshengren) called themselves han-tsî (蕃薯), or “sweet potatoes,” while Mainland soldiers (waishengren) were known as lāu ōo-á (老芋頭), or “old taros.”

Shi Xiaofeng, Professor, Department of Chinese Literature, National Taiwan Normal University

Huang Kequan (1952) is a native of Jinmen in China’s Fujian Province. A graduate of Fu Jen Catholic University’s Department of Chinese Literature, he has served as editor at Book Review-Booklist magazine. Huang has published under many pennames, primarily writing fiction and poetry, but also penning criticism and essays.

Huang Kequan’s writes in an existentialist style, philosophically exploring the human condition. He exhibits profound empathy in his investigations, his work influenced by Western literary trends introduced into Taiwan in 1960s. In the mid-1970s Huang published critical writings on Huang Chunming and Yan Yuanshu, and penned a voluminous series of critiques of Qideng Sheng’s work. In subsequent writings such as Dragonfly Philosopher (1985) and Glass-toothed Wolf (1986) he tended toward an introspective and slightly modernist style, the work combining criticism and creativity.

In the 1990s Huang turned his introspective gaze on society and history in The Too-human Town (1992) and Night Games (1994), two representative works. Military veterans became an important theme in his work. “Old Mainlander, for You I Write” was included in Chiuko Publishing Company’s Best Essays of 1998. The poetry collection Two Hundred Jokes – Dedicated to the Veterans Who’ve Been Mocked by Fate (2006) focuses on individual veterans, giving witness to the lives of two hundred old soldiers exiled from their homelands.

Huang Kequan is not just a purely pragmatic writer; his works place life issues in a historical perspective, conducting deep analyses. Poet Luo Qingyu praised Huang: “With unparalleled philosophical sensitivity, subtle language and multifaceted experimental techniques, he creates bleak and gloomy – yet profoundly moving – mental imagery.” Huang is a recipient of the Wu Chuo-liu Literary Award, the Ministry of Education Literary Creativity Award, the Liang Shih-ch’iu Literary Award, and the China Times Literature Award. Recent works include the novel Mirror Deep (2013), the essay collection An Island’s Book – Jinmen’s History, Culture, and Natural Environment (2014), and the poetry collection Huang Kequan’s 66 Love Poems (2014)