It has always been difficult to advance one's career in the area of Chinese literature on the basis of research on modern art and literature, all the more so with research into Taiwanese literature--the case of Chang Liang-tse serves as a warning. This conservative mentality still remains, despite the lifting of martial law, and especially within academic circles. Thus no matter how much criticism is elicited by the non-academic scholar Yeh Shih-t'ao's T'ai-wan wen-hsüeh shih-kang (A Historical Outline of Taiwanese Literature), Wen-hsüeh-chieh, 1987 or P'eng Jui-chin's T'ai-wan hsin wen-hsüeh yün-tung ssu-shih nien (Forty Years of Taiwan's New Literature Movement), Tzu-li-pao-hsi series, 1991, no one has yet come up with a serious work that differs from the historical viewpoint of Yeh Shih-t'ao and P'eng Jui-chin; it appears that by borrowing the works of Mainland China scholars on Taiwanese literary history one can use them to castigate Yeh and P'eng for being suffused with a parochial mentality and a narrow point of view, all the while ignoring the fact that Taiwanese literature as it developed under the Japanese occupation was consistent in its spirit of opposition and its mentality of resistance; this aspect is particularly salient, and in no way is it just a narrow, parochial mentality.

     The Unique and Dual Nature of Nationalistic Structure within Taiwanese Literature

     The realization of Taiwanese literature as an integrated idea, as described earlier, did not start in the 1980s, but rather came about as an independent idea following the anti-colonialism of leftist Taiwanese literature of the 1930s under Japanese occupation. And although it was written in Chinese so as to distinguish itself from Japanese literature, in no way could it be subsumed by the Chinese literature that was developing at the same time. The chief reason was that politically Taiwan did not belong to China.
     During the 1930s debate over Taiwanese hsiang-t'u literature, Huang Shih-hui published the article "Tsen-yang pu t'i-ch'ang hsiang-t'u wen-hsüeh" (Why Not Promote Hsiang-t'u Literature), in Issues 9-11 of the Wu-jen pao (Five Naysayers Review), giving us much to think about, as in the following excerpt:

     You are Taiwanese. Your head is covered by a Taiwanese sky and your feet walk upon Taiwanese land. What you see with your eyes is the Taiwanese condition, and what you hear with your ears is Taiwanese news. What you undergo through time is the Taiwanese experience; what you speak with your mouth is the Taiwanese language. So your vigorous and inspired pen should go ahead to create a Taiwanese literature.

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