Chen Ying-chen: a literary lion in search of one China
Taiwanese novelist and magazine founder chronicled the lives of the working class and promoted unification with the mainland
Friends, literary critics and politicians paid tribute on Wednesday to leftist Taiwanese writer and former political prisoner Chen Ying-chen, who died in Beijing on Tuesday after a long illness. He was 79.
Literary critic Yao Yi-wei said Chen’s work was “filled with messages of love” that also possessed a “deep melancholy, an eternal sadness that is as heavy as a mountain”.
Born in Hsinchu in northern Taiwan in 1937, Chen was known both as a novelist and the founder of political magazine Ren Jian, or Among the People.
[Chen’s work has a] deep melancholy, an eternal sadness that is as heavy as a mountain
Chen was a supporter of unification with the mainland and the idea of a unifying Chinese national identity. Unlike many other dissidents and political activists of his era, he was not part of Taiwan’s independence movement or a member of the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party.
He became politically active in the late 1950s and was first arrested in 1968 by the then ruling Kuomintang for “leading pro-communist activities”, resulting in his imprisonment on Green Island off Taitung county until 1973.
Chen was arrested again six years later but released quickly after protests by a group of prominent activists and writers.
In 1985, he launched Ren Jian magazine, reporting on political oppression under the KMT’s martial law and the plight of the working class during the island’s industrialisation.
He famously debated writer and academic Chen Fang-ming on the differences between Taiwanese and Chinese literature in 2000.