Q: Why has it been more than ten years since your last collection of short stories?
A: I wasn't really aware that 16 years had passed since I put out a collection of short stories. It seems strange to me, too. Actually, I never forgot about fiction, and I received constant pressure and encouragement from my readers throughout that period. But people today focus so strongly on image that I'd almost given up on fiction. It also seems to me that there is very little linking people's lives with the natural world, and that there is a terrible lack of respect for nature. In the hope of changing that and contributing something to my birthplace, I spent most of the last several years surveying the culture of Ilan, as revealed in both its people and its artifacts.
Q: How is the way you write now different from how you wrote in the past?
A: I used to write stories all in one fell swoop. Once a story was finished, I'd correct any typos and send it out the door. Now I'm a more mature writer; I spend more time polishing and arranging my stories.
Q: Some people have criticized you for inserting your personal opinions and feelings in Sayonara, Goodbye. How do you feel about this sort of criticism?
A: If your mother had been raped, would you smile when telling people about it?
In talking about your people's history, especially such recent history, you are not going to be cool and dispassionate. You're not going to tell it with a little smile on your face. Some academic critics don't approve of an author's personal feelings appearing in a work of fiction, but I don't agree with them. Look at the fiction written during the Sino-Japanese War and the Russian literature from the days of Soviet Imperialism. Those are passionate works, protests shouted at the top of their writers' lungs. When I'm writing on my people's history, I can't write without emotion.
Q: Why are the protagonists of all ten stories in this collection elderly persons?
A: In modern society, the elderly have been pushed offstage. It's like you're filming a movie. The elderly have had an "entrance" and an "exit." I feel that the greatest cultural contradictions exist where new and old bang into one another, where they interact. By working very hard, the elderly people of my father's generation managed to take care of their parents while they raised their own families. Now that they themselves are old, they unexpectedly find themselves being "let go."
To me, the problem of the elderly is a serious social issue. It must be attended to. Maybe now that I'm getting older, I can't help but feel a little resentful about the way the elderly are treated.
Q: Why are all these elderly protagonists from rural areas? Elderly people in urban areas are also facing very serious problems.
A: The rural elderly better illustrate the problems I'm trying to highlight, and rural communities are still built around neighborhoods. There are no real neighborhoods in urban areas.
I've always felt that the smallest unit of society was the village or neighborhood, not the family. In this new, changed society, those in their prime have all moved to the city to make money. As a result, both urban and rural communities lack something; both are incomplete.
Today's senior citizens laid the foundation upon which Taiwan's current success was built, but they've been abandoned in these rural communities. We, their juniors, are an ungrateful generation.
Q: Do you feel that transplanting the elderly to the city is a better solution? Who can answer the questions you've raised in your stories?
A: Obviously, taking senior citizens from a place with which they are familiar and moving them to the city is not a good solution. This is a problem with the structure of our society. But this kind of sudden change is not the sort of thing that one person can put a stop to. The government should have a system of benefits for the elderly, and a strategy for dealing with them.
Q: You have said, "The land is like our mother." Why do you have such deep feelings for your birthplace?
A: The psychologist Carl Jung once said that people naturally identify with the place where they were born. Have you ever noticed that people's faces are different when they talk about where they come from?
Identification with your birthplace is very important. If people have it from childhood, their characters don't become twisted as they grow. Take me as an example. I was a "bad kid." But while I was growing up, these feelings for my hometown were constantly calling out to me, until I finally turned away from the "bad" path I was traveling down.
Unfortunately, today's children are constantly moving while they are growing up and speak a different language than their elders. As a result, they don't have a chance to develop a love of their birthplace during their childhood.
Q: Many of the settings and scenes depicted in the book are strange to today's young people. Are you worried that there might not be broad interest in the book among young people?
A: I'm not worried about this, no. We can still be deeply moved by novels written long ago, even though we haven't typically experienced the scenes depicted in them.
Q: There are a number of Taiwanese expressions in the book. Did you write the book in Taiwanese?
A: Fiction employs four types of language: the language of description, the language of the mind, the language of action and the language of dialogue. I think dialogue between characters is especially important, and dialogue must be appropriate to characters' backgrounds and personalities. A writer can use dialogue to reveal very deep things about a character without describing them.
Q: These characters are vivid and "real." Are they based on real people?
A: The elderly were the subject of my rural research. I often chatted with them, and naturally accumulated a lot of "material." Usually, I get a firm grasp on some situation, then work outwards from there into the causes and effects. In working out the background of a story, you must rely on your own experience and observations, and your knowledge of the setting. In putting it together, you must grasp the inevitability, universality and representativeness of the situation to make it all work.
My fiction tends to have a long "gestation" period. My family and friends hear stories several times before I write them down; and while I'm telling the stories, I add and subtract things based on the listeners' responses. When I finally get to the point of putting a draft on paper, it goes very quickly.
Q: What are you working on now? When is your next collection of short stories going to come out?
A: Right now I'm planning a bimonthly publication called Nine Twists and Eighteen Turns that will focus on the geography, history and culture of Ilan. The first issue should be out next January.
My next novel-The Longan Season-is about my grandmother. This story has been in the works for a number of years, and many people have heard me tell it. I expect it to make the public's acquaintance next July with the arrival of the longan season.
I'm also planning an autobiography, the title of which is The Growth and Literature of a "Bad Kid".
p.56
"I wasn't really aware that 16 years had passed since I put out a collection of short stories," says Huang Chun-ming. But he also never forgot about fiction.
p.58
For Huang, the earth is like a mother nurturing children. It not only nourishes us, but also calls to us when we go astray.
For Huang, the earth is like a mother nurturing children. It not only nourishes us, but also calls to us when we go astray.
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