Taipei People

"Many consider Taipei People not only Pai Hsien-yung’s finest work but among the most exquisite stories of all of modern Chinese literature. Pai combines highly literate semi-classical Chinese with techniques of modernism, especially interior monologue. The narratives also pay intricate attention to symbolism, particularly of light and color. The collection centers on the decadent world of Taipei’s Shanghainese exiles. In many of the stories, the mainland émigrés’ attempts to recapture the past reveal the power and dangers of nostalgia. Whereas most of the tales present an image of leisure, comfort, and gentility, the narrators’ accounts often subtly undermine the splendor of the émigrés’ world. The reader is often left with a sad vision of moral decay. Or at least with a sense of lost glory and forsaken dreams. I’ll talk about one of the best examples. In “The Eternal Snow Beauty” a sense of mystery is associated with the title character, Snow Beauty. The narrator details her ethereal image, her silvery and white wardrobe, her zephyr movements, and her icy demeanor. Her elegant residence offers a venue for the émigrés to forget their troubles. She represents their collective past. As she strokes her guests’ egos, they relive a sense of their former beauty, glamor, status, and power back in Shanghai. The story also tells of influential men who lost everything after winning her as a partner. Yet the accounts about Snow Beauty ultimately neglect her humanity. The story allows her a shard of feeling only at the end when she dares to pay her respects at the funeral of a man whose downfall others blame on her evil influence. In a way, it’s a modern-day version of the “fox fairy” legends and other classical Chinese tales that demonize beautiful women, and women’s sexual power more generally. Pai’s stories do contain strong autobiographical elements. As the son of an illustrious general, he was able to observe people from disparate social and socioeconomic groups. Many of his works mourn his father’s generation. Pai is also a double exile. First his family fled mainland China through Hong Kong to Taipei. Later he moved to the United States to pursue an MFA and became a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Even though Pai wrote most of the stories when he was already in California, his Taipei characters may well reflect acquaintances and friends, as well as his own experience both there and abroad. The most autobiographical story might be “Winter Night.” Like many stories in the collection, the narrative present takes place in a single evening. A famous historian returns to Taipei and visits his old friend, a Byron specialist. The story is intricately crafted to convey the long arc of the two friends’ lives. In their youth, the two men were leaders in the 1919 May Fourth demonstrations against imperialism. Now, at the end of their careers as professors, they share nostalgia for their youthful ideals, and their disappointments with their subsequent lives. The Berkeley professor admits that he would never have written his books had he not faced “publish or perish,” and that abroad he feels like a deserter. The Byron scholar laments that he never finished his translation of Byron’s poems and hasn’t translated anything in years. He frets that his translations would have few readers in any event. The story can serve as a meta statement about the Taipei people still living in the past. The historian tells of his Berkeley students excited by anti-Vietnam protests, and how he proudly recounted his group’s bolder actions during the May Fourth demonstrations. He also tells of his shame when a young American upstart from Harvard calls the May Fourth Movement “an aborted renaissance.” Also ashamed, the Byron scholar asks his friend if he could find him a teaching position in the States. Rebuffed, he enters a reverie of meeting his long-deceased wife, then a beautiful student supporting the May Fourth protests. He recalls a passionate poem he wrote for her, published in a revolutionary journal. The story ends with the sound of icy rain falling on Taipei."