"The Newsboy"was published as the second place selection in Bungaku hyôron (Literary Review) 1:8 .  The original name of the author, Yang K'uei, was Yang Kuei, and his native place was Hsin-hua town in T'ai-nan prefecture (the former Hsin-hua village, Hsin-hua county, T'ai-nan prefecture).  He was for a long time the leader of the "Taiwan New Literature"movement, and "The Newsboy"is not only the work by which he made a name for himself, but also the work representative of his writing as a whole.  "The Oxcart,"inspired by the appearance of "The Newsboy,"was published three months later in Bungaku hyôron (Literary Review) 2:1. "The Newsboy"appeared in October 1934, and "The Oxcart"appeared in the following January issue.  The writer Lü He-jo was a native of Feng-yüan town, T'ai-chung prefecture (the former Feng-yüan district, Feng-yüan county, T'ai-chung prefecture).  "The Oxcart"was his first work; he later published Arashi no monogatari (Tale of the Storm), Seishû (Clear Autumn), and other stories, and a collection of short stories also exists.

     Lung Ying-tsung's original name was Lung Jung-tsung, and he was born in Bei-p'u village, Hsin-chu prefecture (the former Bei-p'u village, Chu-tung county, Hsin-chu prefecture).  Lung Ying-tsung turned to writing as a profession when "The Town with the Papaya Trees"was selected as the best entry in the ninth fiction prize contest held by Kaizô (Revisions).  According to the April 1937 issue of Kaizô, Lung was born as the child of an impoverished merchant in Meiji 44 (1911), and at nine years of age began his education at a public school (an elementary school that accepted Taiwanese).  After having completed an advanced course at the same school, he entered the Taiwan Commercial and Industrial College, and, when he graduated, he found employment in the Bank of Taiwan.  He first served in the Nan-t'ou branch, and then was transferred to the Taipei main office.  It is said that he began practicing writing in Japanese from the time he was fifteen.  Lung is mentioned in III:  Kessenka no Taiwan bungaku (III: Taiwan Literature Under Conditions of Decisive Battle) as one of the Taiwan delegates to the first Greater East Asia Writers Convention held in Tokyo and Osaka from November 3 to 10 in Shôwa 17 [1942] along with Nishikawa Mitsuru, Hamada Toshio, and Chang Wen-huan.

     "The Newsboy,""The Oxcart,"and "The Town with the Papaya Trees"are all written in Japanese.  Although Lung also has works published in Chinese, there are very few works in Chinese for Yang K'uei and Lü He-jo.  If we read through these three works in chronological order, we get a sense of being able to follow in some degree an awareness of Taiwanese writers shying away from resistance and tending toward resignation and even submissiveness.

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