When I was ten years old, the Da Ban Yi anti-Japanese incident occurred. From a crevice in the front door of our house, I watch the Japanese artillery forces as a move from Tainan to Da Ban Yi. Later, I overheard my older brother talking about his experiences with the Japanese military during his stands as a military aid draftee. I listen to what the older people in our Billy said about the atrocities the Japanese committed in Da Ban Yi. Later, when I was a bit older, I bought a book about the history of Taiwanese rebels. The book recorded over ten incidents of so-called rebellions such as the Da Ban Yi incident. It was clear to me then that when our rulers wrote about the history of such incidents, they would always twist the facts and create stories. I saw the contrast between the ruthless rulers and the righteous people. This is whether a meaty side to live my life as a writer. I wanted to write stories to describe and correct the twisted history offered by the rulers. Describing the miserable lives of the colonize people and their protests against the cruelty of their rulers naturally became my primary concern.

The Da Ban Yi incident mentioned here occurred in July-August of 1915 in a suburb of Tainan. The uprising was led by Yu Qingfeng (mentioned in "The Newspaper Boy" as a deterrent for villagers in Mr. Yang's hometown to rebel against the Japanese sugar company, since Yu Qingfeng, a Taiwanese rebel, was brutally executed by Japanese authorities), Jiang Ding, and Lou Jun. the rebel troops were defeated after 50 days of fierce battle, and all three leaders were sentenced to death, along with several hundred of their followers.

Throughout Yang Kui's work, a thread of Taiwanese nationalism is present, although it is not as visible in his writing as it is in other Taiwanese writers of this. Many of the Taiwanese writers took up writing hoping to rouse their patriots from their "sloth, apathy, and intellectual sterility in the face of Japanese barbarity." Yang's contemporaries, such as the writers Lai (1894-1943), Wu Zhouliu (1900-1976), and Zhu Tianren (1903-1947) per trade specific cross-sections of Taiwanese society in a chilling realistic light. In these writer's stories, those who appear abominable are not only the Japanese conquerors but there "Taiwanese vassles who are only two year to surrender their Chinese identity, including their names, to qualify them to enjoy the special privileges of a naturalized Japanese citizen."

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