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Kaori Lai: 白色畫像 (Portraits in White)

Taiwan is now a democracy but it was not always so. The nationalists known as the Kuomintang under Chiang Kai-shektake overall of China, including Taiwan, after the defeat of the Japanese. However, the communists gradually beat them back and in 1949 they were defeated and had to leave mainland China and moved entirely to Taiwan.

For many years, the nationalist ruled with a rod of iron on the excuse that they had to keep out communism. It was limited freedom in Taiwan and people were imprisoned and indeed often killed for any opposition.

Kaori Lai I was born in 1949 and therefore grew up under the. Nationalists She was also alive when they were gradually ousted and democracy took over. This book tells the stories of three people who are very much alive during the Nationalist period and shows how all three people struggled. An excellent introduction explains the background in more detail and shows us what the situation was like in Taiwan at that time something that and,I suspect, most Westerners were not really aware of.

One of the key issues is that when the nationalist moved internally to Taiwan, they took with them many of the military and civil servants that supported them and it was these people, rather than the people who have been born and brought up in Taiwan, who ran the country. They considered themselves far superior and that they spoke Mandarin and not Taiwanese and had had an education in Chinese culture.

Our first story concerns Ch’ing-chih. We first meet him when he is seventeen years old and studying. unfortunately he has contracted tuberculosis and this is going to hinder his studies and while he does get some medical help he does have to struggle somewhat to deal with his problem. He had done very well at school and was doing well in his current studies and hoped to do well enough to get a good career. He had been close to. Ch’un-ho even though she was older than him. However, she disappeared from his life when there were troubles with her family. He tries to keep a low profile and avoid conflict because they have been in trouble in his family and he didn’t want to risk any problem with the authorities. He becomes friends with Chang another boy who keeps a fairly low profile. They are criticised by their teacher for speaking Japanese when in fact they were speaking Taiwanese. Unlike Chang he had to spend his holidays cutting sugarcane which was hard work. We learn about his room-mates as well. Chang gives him translated literature to read and then later gets involved in modern poetry but our hero is less keen on that. One of the boys even read the Bible and he is somewhat bemused by this.

Ch’un-ho reappears in his life ‘ sending him a letter. She is now in the military. He is somewhat concerned for her when the. Second Taiwan Strait Crisis breaks out.

We follow his studies in general education. But he does not seem to be too happy asCh’un,ho seems to have found someone else his friend has gradually drift away as they. have different interests.

We jump ahead and find him married and with children. His wife is not happy as they have a sick child. He had had to do military service soon after getting married and this does not help their marriage as his wife is quite miserable with his absence, even though he was very successful in his military service. He gets into a career in teaching at the same time in administration in the education field. He does fairly well and becomes a political warfare officer but he and his wife are far from happy with the situation. “He was a teacher at the age of nineteen and a father at twenty-three. Life came at him, nonstop.

He continues to have problems with the job, with the bosses and with his family, including with his daughter. He knows that his old friend Chang Kuang-ming is an alcoholic . In short even for those people who do very well in their political careers life is very hard and they struggle to make a living. One of his former friends, now a journalist, says there are many people in the country who are actually starving. While things may get better in the future certainly during this period of his life, for most people, life is still grim.

Our next story concernsWen-Hui. When we first meet her, she is an aging grandmother, not in good health living with her granddaughter and daughter and things are hard. We follow her life from a young age when she was a maid. She was married to a man who thought he could make millions from investments but most of his investments went wrong and even when they succeeded, others did better and most of his earnings went off to pay previous debts. They do have three children, but eventually he dies and she is left alone. She has no choice but to return to working as a maid or housekeeper in various households. We learn about this and different types of households that she and others work in. She she gets a good job as a housekeeper in a Japanese family, but of course, when the Japanese lose the war they return to Japan. They offered to take her with them but she does not want to be separated from her family and declines. She finally gets a job with a man who is a well-received doctor who will eventually get into politics which causes problems. However, on the whole she is very happy there and moves on from being a maid to beinghe housekeeper. However, she is getting old and she starts to have medical problems and eventually accepts that she will have to resign. She has saved up some money as a maid and bought a house in which her daughter and her husband live and she moves in with them. We follow her last years which are difficult because of health problems. There is no health service for the poor or national health service so she to get treatment.

Our final story concerns Casey, who has eye problems.As the doctor says eople always ask for too much. The aging of the organ was the cause, not an infection or a virus. We know that she is now in Berlin She had been with someone called Mark who is now dead. We do not know whether they were actually married or not, but it does seem they did not have children. We follow her story. She came from a well-to-do family, but when the father died, the number of matchmakers appearing dramatically reduced. She had done well. at school. Professor Ts’ao, who taught English poetry had advised her to leave the country and go abroad. She had studied English and hoped to make a career in Taiwan when the recruiters learned that her family was originally from Taiwan and not from mainland China opportunities were not forthcoming. She was able to get a job doing some interpreting, but she could see she was not going to make much progress.Not being permitted to speak the truth was one thing, but she had to learn to lie like everyone else.. Her mother said that she would probably end up an old maid.

She is told that there are opportunities for people speaking Chinese as the West is becoming interested in the East and she could probably get jobs there so off she goes to Paris. She does get work in Paris and also keeps in touch with other Taiwanese. They find out that they are being spied on and two of their number are not able to renew their passports at the embassy and she is worried that the same might happen to her and she will not be able to return to visit her family. She becomes friends with.Ah-Chen but then, to her surprise, he attacks and stabs a Taiwanese politician and is, of course arrested
But things are happening in Paris. It is 1968 and there is revolution in the air and the Taiwanese wonder whether something similar could happen back home, though they suspect not.

.Finally, the day came for Casey to think about leaving Paris. She wouldn’t have been sincere if she’d said she didn’t like the city, but she’d “had too much of Bonjour Tristesse. She is off to West Berlin but does not plan to stay long. She had to learn German from scratch, the food was awful, and the walls of her room were a dreary white. She plans to leave, however her plans are curtailed by meeting Mark and they have a long relationship till he dies prematurely. She is of course influenced my world events, particularly the fall of the Berlin Wall and end of communism in Germany and then the subsequent changes in Taiwan. Prior to that she had been back to Taiwan. The first time she visited friends but then found out they were visited by the police afterwards so when she went back later, she just stayed with her mother but even then she had problems as they almost did not let her leave the country and return to Berlin. She carries on not entirely sure what she wants or where she is going, but she does not return to Taiwan but stays on in Berlin and keeps in touch with old friends including with.Ah-Chen who had served five years in prison and was now released.

With all of the people in this book you get the feeling they are drifting, and unsure of what is happening and where they are going. They know they do not like what is happening in Taiwan and when they escape the country, then they remain homesick, or, if they stay, they have to buckle down and put up with the repression that they and others have to face. Kaori Lai makes it clear that whole period, up to the presidential elections and the return of democracy in Taiwan was grim for everybody, regardless of whether they stayed in Taiwan or left the country to go abroad.

Publishing history

First published in 2022 by by Ink Literature and Life Magazine Publishing Co., Ltd.,
First English translation in 2025 by Columbia University Press
Translated bySylvia Li­Chun Lin and Howard Goldblatt