Throughout their history the Taiwanese people have constantly suffered cruel oppression from outside political power.  The people of Taiwan have their own special historical circumstances, with their own ideals and aspirations.  The "phenomenon of literature"is thus an aspect of Taiwanese culture and humanistic activity.  This being so, there is no such thing as a Taiwanese literature that is removed from the viewpoint of the Taiwanese people.   Second, once given freedom of expression, literature, like political ideas and methods of politics and economics, cannot avoid divisions among political parties or conflicts in theoretical inquiry;  and included within all of this are such factors as the composition of individual character and the formation of one's personal experience.

     Since "human activity"dwells in such confusing turmoil, how can one avoid losing sight of reality and truth?  There is a simple and direct solution:  that is, to return to the land and the people first.  And for literature, this means that the viewpoint of the Taiwanese people is the viewpoint of the land and the people of Taiwan;  and the viewpoint of the land and the people of Taiwan is simply the viewpoint of the Taiwanese people.  The two are clearly one and the same.

     Having considered matters to this point, we must now deal with the question of the "subjectivity of Taiwanese literature,"which entails that we clarify the question of the "Taiwanese subjectivity." It is to these problems that we now turn.

     "Taiwan"is an object of nature, and as such, ontologically speaking, does not possess a "subjectivity";  it only exists in the realm of human culture.  However, when we consider the advanced development of ecology, we can see that human beings began to understand a "subjectivity"with respect to the land, this object of nature-a subjectivity, moreover, formed by such conditions characteristic of the land as degrees of longitude and latitude, temperature and humidity, amount of sunshine, wind direction and strength, geology and hydrology, as well as other external relations.  And of necessity, "humanity,"this "ecological population,"could only develop by adapting to nature in terms of the land's subjectivity.

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