Dai Huaxuan, Assistant Professor, Department of Taiwanese Literature, Aletheia University

There are many all-boys and all-girls high schools in Taiwan. One of the reasons for this is to allow the students to focus on preparing for university entrance exams without the distractions that members of the opposite sex mightprovide. Actually, students won’t stop secreting hormones on account of an exam, no matter how important– at this stage of their lives young people naturally imagine and yearn for contact with the opposite sex.In Xia Lie’s zanily humorous “White Gate, Goodbye” a group ofstudents from an all-boys school take a great interest in a girl who lives in house with a white gate, the young woman’s loveliness, poise, and bearing capturing the boys’ hearts.Because none of them have ever spoken to the girl, the young men don’t know her name, so they dub her “White Gate.”From then on, “White Gate” is more than a topic of the boys’idle chitchat; she is, moreover, the motivation for and spiritual symbol of their adolescent pursuit of truth and beauty.For example, when the boys compete in an intramural basketball tournament, they call their team “White Door,” the name alone drawing crowds of admiring spectators. When students are held back and have to repeat a grade, the image “White Gate”encourages them to do better. At a year-end dinner party for their teachers, the college-bound youths raise their glasses and toast “White Gate,” as if she alone were responsible for their academic success.

By the time they’ve reached senior year in the university, the boys have undergone various trials and tribulations on the road to adulthood. Some have experienced serious setbacks: one has lost an arm in a traffic accident; academic pressures have ruined another’s health; a third’s family has gone bankrupt. Others’woes aren’t as grave: getting dumped by a girlfriend, receiving a demerit, having to postpone graduation. After the boys experience various difficulties and hardships, their thinking gradually matures.The one thing that hasn’t changed is the image branded in their collective consciousness: “White Gate.” And although they haven’t seen the girl since high school, for them she still symbolizes eternal purity, hope, and beauty. After university graduation, however, the boyschance to meetthe young womanat a high school teacher’s home. But the twenty year-old “White Gate” isn’t at all the what they’d imagined her to be – as it turns out, she’s married to a fifty-something, baldheaded fat man, head of a securities firm, and all she talks about are her exploits at the mah-jongg table, the apparentlack of refinement completely subverting her goddess image.

When the young men encounter the real “White Gate,” their long-held spiritual ideal, they are disillusioned, and disillusionment is often the beginning of growth. In the story the incident occurs just after the youths have finished their military service and are about to take their places in society, implying that they’ve reached adulthood and are ready for the next stage of life.

Dai Huaxuan, Assistant Professor, Department of Taiwanese Literature, Aletheia University

Xia Lie (1941- ) is the penname of Xia Zuchao. A native of Beijing, the writer grew up in Taiwan. He is the eldest son ofwriters He Fan (Xia Chengying) and Lin Haiyin. After graduating from National Cheng Kung University’s Department of Hydraulic and Ocean Engineering, he earned a doctorate in civil engineering from Michigan State University. In the U.S. he worked as a bridge engineer and manager of a geotechnical engineering project, returning to Taiwan in 1998 to care for his parents. He has taught classes in foreign literature, modern fiction and essays, literature and film, and literature and technology at Shih Hsin University and National TsingHua University. Thus, Xia has made his mark in both the literary and technological worlds. 

Xia Lie began writing as a university student. “White Gate, Goodbye,” his best-known short story, was published in the Central Daily News supplement in 1963, the work’s “growth” theme expressed with humor and pathos. While pursuing doctoral studies Xia put writing aside, but reentered Taiwanese literary circles in 1990 with the publication of his first short-story collection, The Last Red-headed Crow (republished in 2000 as White Gate, Goodbye). The work occupied a top spot on the United Daily News’ “Best New Books” bestseller chart for four months.In 1994 Xia Lie’s first novel, Hunter, won the National Award for Arts, after which he again suspended literary activities. He was awarded the Chinese Institute of Engineers “Technology and Humanism” prize in 2006. He began writing again in 2008, publishing his first collection of essays, The Flowing River of Time,combining memories, nostalgia, and intellectual musings. In 2012 he published A Jianguo ¹  Student’s Thoughts – Seventeen Life Lessons for High School Students, discussing the importance of creativity, religion, romance, money, character, and other topics.

¹Jianguo High School in Taipei is Taiwan’s top-ranking boys’ high school.
See: http://web.ck.tp.edu.tw/web2007en/index.php