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

Another World in a Motel (2011) is Taiwan’s first full-length novel set in the Taichung area, the story unfolding in many well-known Taichung locales: Zhongyi Street, the Fengjia University commercial district, the Zhonghua Road night market, Dadu Mountain, the Xinshe district, Urban Park, Tunghai University, and the middle-of-the-lake pavilion in Taichung Park. In earlier times Taichung City was regarded as Taiwan’s cultural capital. Later, however, the city gained fame for its surfeit of nightclubs, love hotels, and other sex-related enterprises, becoming a center of violent underworld activity. High-school student Wu Jilun, the novel’s protagonist, suffers from he calls “bad-mood disorder” – in his eyes the adult world is an incredibly ugly place, full of lies, deceit, and hypocrisy. The novel goes on to depict the anguish and bewilderment – and hopes and dreams – of a young man in the process of maturing. A longtime high-school teacher, author Zhang Jinghong thoroughly understands adolescents’ thinking and campus culture, the story told in a vivid narrative voice.

Orphaned as a child, Wu Jilun’s was raised by an uncle and aunt who treated him like a son. At school he’s a loner, friendless and marginalized. In Jilun’s eyes, his classmates –obsessed with comic books, video games, and online porn – are “dipshits”; his teacher, a woman who worships luxury goods and extols academic advancement, is a “twit”; and school, with its textbooks and tests, is a “crap-hole.” For Jilun, school is meaningless, offering no opportunities for growth.After the disciplinarian slaps him because he mistakenly believes Jilun set off a firecracker in the classroom, Jilun decides to drop out of school and find his own way in the world. He gets a job at a love hotel, where he works for three months. There he witnesses the seamy side of the adult world: White-collar professionals, proper and respectable by day, turn into sex-hounds by night, and his platitude-spouting high-school teacher, who fashions herself as a paragon of virtue, is having an affair the school principal. Thus, the writer criticizes the disparity between educators’ words and deeds, calling the educational system into question and satirizing adult-world immorality.Meanwhile, Wu Jilun faces major life changes: a test of friendship, falling in love, his uncle’s car crash, and the death of a school administrator who was like a mentor to him. From these experiences Jilun finally comes to realize that life is far from perfect, and he no longer so cynical and embittered; he also understands that only by growing stronger will he overcome even greater challenges.

In the end, Wu Jilun has a far-reaching dream:If someday he has the ability, he’d like to buy a motel with a garden, and convert it into a special place where people could come to chat, a place where young people could find answers to their sense of helplessness and perplexity, or discuss the value of life and avenues to growth. Another World in a Motel shows the influence of American writer J.D. Salinger, and has been acclaimed as Taiwan’s Catcher in the Rye.

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

Zhang Jinghong (1969- ), a Taichung native, holds a master’s degree from National Taiwan University’s Graduate Institute of Chinese Literature. Formerly a Chinese instructor at Taichung First High School, he now pens a column for young people inthe China Times literary supplement “Human World.” Zhang began writing in high school, winning the National Student Literature Award. He later gave up creative writing to pursue academic research, but took up his pen again while teaching literature and writing at Taichung First High School, ending over a decade of creative dormancy. He subsequently took home a number of literary prizes – in 2007 alone he won the Da Dun Literature Award, the Taichung County Literature Award, the Ministry of Education Literature Award, and the Unitas Best New Fiction Writer Award. In 2011 Zhang’s Another World in the Motel won first prize in the “Nine SongsTwo Million Novels” competition, the most lucrative prize in the Chinese literary world.

Most of Zhang’s works are set in Taichung, which he has described as a “city that never sleeps.” A meticulous observer, Zhang reflects on Taiwan’s educational system, looking directly at human desires and changes in the urban environment. His forte is simple, concise prose, employing magical realist techniques and virtual situations. By turns playful and sorrowful, Zhang probes life’s truths, examining existential puzzles and predicaments. All of his stories point to the realities of modern life, his humor and irony home to deep, worldly emotion, his multifaceted works charmingly readable. Publications include the essay collection Cloudlike Clothing (2012), and the short-story collections Another World in a Motel (2011), The Game That Couldn’t Come Out (2012), Horny Guys and Gals (2012), A Little House Come Down from Heaven (2013), and Late Study Hall (2014).