Taiwan Literature: Special Issue on Wang Chen-ho

The latest special issue of Taiwan Literature: English Translation Series focuses on the short stories written by Wang Chen-ho not only to reveal his leading role in the Nativist literature that rose in Taiwan during the 1990s, but to introduce his works in the unique local language of Taiwan for English language readers. In this special issue on Wang Chen-ho, seven stories were selected for translation: “The Winter That Year,” “Two Tigers,” “Little Lin Comes to Taipei,” “She Really Can Put Curses on People,” “Sulan’s Gonna Get Married,” “The Mouse Serves a Guest Tea,” and “Miss Sulan’s Gonna Get Married—A Lifetime of Marital Bliss.” These seven stories span the two periods of Wang’s works mentioned above. The first five belong to the first period of Naturalism, while the last two break away from Naturalism to embrace broader themes, even containing a lot of comedy, as in the final story, “Miss Sulan’s Gonna Get Married—A Lifetime of Marital Bliss.”

• Kuo-ch'ing Tu, Author

  Kuo-ch’ing Tu (b. 1941), graduated from National Taiwan University (1963) with a major in English literature. He received his MA in Japanese literature from Kwansei Gakuin University (1970) and his PhD in Chinese literature from Stanford University (1974). His research interests include Chinese literature, Chinese poetics and literary theories, comparative literature East and West, and world literatures of Chinese. He is the author of numerous books of poetry in Chinese, as well as translator of Baudelaire and T. S. Eliot into Chinese. He held the Lai Ho and Wu Cho-liu Endowed Chair in Taiwan Studies and was the Director of the Center for Taiwan Studies at the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies, University of California at Santa Barbara, until he retired in March 2021. He has been co-editor of Taiwan Literature: English Translation Series since its initial publication in 1996. His recent publications include Shanhe lüeying [A Sweeping View of China’s Mountains and Rivers], Yuyan ji [The Jade Smoke Collection: Fifty Variations on Li Shangyin’s Songs of the Ornamented Zither], Shilun, shiping, shilunshi [Poetics, Poetic Critiques, and Poems of Poetics], and Taiwan wenxue yu Shi-Hua wenxue [Taiwan Literature and World Literatures of Chinese], Guang she chenfang yuanzhao wanxiang [Light Shines Through the World of Dust, Illuminating the Myriad Objects], and Tui chuang wang yue [Pushing Open the Window, Gazing at the Moon: Collected Essays by Tu Kuo-ch’ing]."