Wang Yuting, Associate Professor, Institute of Taiwan Literature, National Tsing Hua University

“Red Ribbons” is taken from Wang Dingjun’s essay collection Broken Colored-Glass (1978), a memoir. On the book’s first page Wang states the main theme – “broken colored-glass” – combining his personal experience and an era’s history through “a cross-section of life” and “samplings from a million souls.” Viewing the past through the present, the writer expresses his feelings for both history and a particular historical period.

A symbol of tradition, an ancient bell opens “Red Ribbons,” the first-person narrative richly lyrical. “Red Ribbons” is the narrator’s elementary-school principal’s daughter, the red ribbons with which she braids her hair a lovely symbol of girlhood. Naturally, the narrator has a puppy-love crush on the girl. At the time the Second Sino-Japan War (1937-1945) had just broken out. Concerned for students’ safety, the principal holds air-raid drills. At a signal from the ancient bell, the narrator and the principal’s daughter take shelter in a dugout when an actual attack occurs. During a second air raid the narrator gives the girl a letter expressing his feelings for her as they are beside the bell. After the danger has passed the school is closed indefinitely, the old bell buried to prevent the enemy from stealing it, and the principal and his daughter disappear. The narrator joins the military to fight for his country, actualizing what was foreshadowed by something the principal said: one day the students would have to leave their homes and families. The essay vividly portrays the social upheaval that characterized the period.

Later the narrator has a chance encounter with the principal and asks about his daughter. The principal surmises the girl panicked and by mistake leaped into the hole dug to bury the bell and was trapped within. The man consoles himself by believing his daughter is encased in the buried bell, and not drifting alone and friendless on the tides of war, the confession eliciting great sorrow. The essay ends with the narrator’s dream. He returns to the bell and asks a worker to help him lift it, but underneath is only the letter he wrote to Red Ribbons – unopened – a conclusion that resonates endlessly with readers. 

Wang Dingjun has said he was one of the first to use fiction-writing techniques in essays, and “Red Ribbons” is an embodiment of that authorial strategy. The essay also features elements of playwriting in its use of dialogue to advance the plot, laying groundwork for the climax, blending fiction and essay writing. Although “Red Ribbons” is primarily a wartime love story, Wang Dingjun didn’t simply set out to write a gauzy, immature romance – the tale is actually a metaphor for all the young Chinese women made destitute and homeless by the fires of war. Some of these girls shared Red Ribbons’ fate; others were like the young woman, her hair worn in a long braid, whom the narrator met while performing military service – having fully experienced the conflict’s bloody cruelty she was forced to either become independent or lose her life. “Red Ribbons” voices Wang Dingjun’s melancholic recollections and contemplations of the historic wartime era. 

Wang Yuting, Associate Professor, Institute of Taiwan Literature, National Tsing Hua University

Wang Dingjun (1925- ), a native of China’s Shandong province, came to Taiwan in 1949. In 1978 he relocated to the United States, accepting a post at Seton Hall University’s Bilingual Education Center. In 1987 officially emigrated to the U.S. He has served as copy-edit group leader and production-group leader at China Broadcasting Co., and copy-edit group leader at China Television Co. He has acted as chief editor of Military Newspaper, Taiwan Tribune, Detective News, and Chinese Language Monthly. He has penned news reports and programming for Chinese Culture College (now Chinese Culture University), National Taiwan University of Arts, Shih Hsin College of Journalism (now Shih Hsin University). Under the penname Fang Yizhi he primarily writes essays, but has also authored poetry, fiction, screenplays, and criticism. He is a winner of the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Literature Award, the Golden Tripod Award, the Chinese Literature and Arts Medal, the Sun Yat-sen Academic and Cultural Foundation Creative Writing Award, the China Times Recommended Reading Award for Essays, and the Wu Luqin Essay Award. Important works include the “Three Books of Life” – An Open Life (1975), Life’s Touchstone (1975), and We Moderns (1975), Chinese the World Over (1982), Whirlpool of the Heart (1988), Random Decoder (1997), Spiritual Enjoyment (1998), Catching Butterflies (1999), and the four-volume memoir “Wang Dingjun Remembers”: Yesterday’s Clouds (1992), Glowering Youth (1995), Taking the Guanshan Road, and Literary Country. He is one of Taiwan’s greatest contemporary essayists.

Wang Dingjun lived through WWII, the Chinese Civil War, and Taiwan’s martial-law era, ultimately emigrating to the U.S., the diasporic life tempering his well-rounded creative spirit. Wang’s work is rich in philosophical implications, his language precise and refined. An adherent of both Christianity and Buddhism, his is a sophisticated life philosophy. In 1951 joined Zhang Daofan’s “Creative Writing Research Group,” coming under the tutelage of writers Wang Mengou, Zhao Youpei, and Li Chendong, his introduction to literary circles. Wang wrote ceaselessly from then on, publishing over forty works. With a solid grounding in Chinese classical literature, in the 1950s and 60s Wang began borrowing techniques from fiction and essay writers as a means of imbuing his essays with symbolism and depth. Early works such as his “Three Books of Life” series pioneered an unadorned, aphoristic style of essay writing. His travel book Chinese the World Over explores other cultures and societies. Wang’s thematic concerns in Whirlpool of the Heart and Random Decoder repeatedly vary and extend his “great essay” style; filled with symbolism Whirlpool of the Heart and Catching Butterflies read like poetry, brilliant and coherent. Notable recent works include his four-volume memoir. The first three volumes – Yesterday’s Clouds, Glowering Youth, and Taking the Guanshan Road recount the writer’s early years in China, while Literary Country, the final volume, is a record of his time in Taiwan. Examing his life and his country, witnessing history, the works are a concrete expression of Wang Dingjun’s devotion to both the art of the essay and his own creative ideals.