Through the medium of Japanese, Taiwan’s intellectuals came to know more about what was going on in the world than their compatriots in mainland China. But Taiwan still felt the shock waves of the founding of the Republic of China in 1911 and the May Fourth Movement of 1919 and the new culture movement. Overnight, China’s moribund imperial system was overthrown, and its educational system, which was geared for the imperial exams, was scrapped. The modern vernacular became the new medium for writing as well as for education. Writers in Taiwan had the luxury of being able to write in Chinese or Japanese, and some even toyed with using the local dialect.

  However, as the Japanese embarked on a course of military expansionism in Asia, they sought to consolidate support by placing restrictions on the use of Chinese. Eventually the language was banned. Local writers responded in two ways: they took part in international avant-garde movements such as surrealism or they focused on literary nativism, attempting to articulate what it meant to be Taiwanese and criticizing the Japanese. More often than not, this meant looking to rural society, because it was seen as a last bastion of traditional Taiwanese values. But in both cases, writers used the language of the colonizer: Japanese.

  After the war, with the arrival of the Nationalist government from mainland China, Japanese was soon suppressed, as was the local dialect, in education, government, and the media. This effectively silenced a generation of writers who had received Japanese educations. The political climate did not allow for activism, so most literati looked to the West for inspiration.

  But as some of the older writers made the transition to Chinese and a younger generation of Chinese-educated writers emerged, resistance to the westernization trend grew. Local writers began investigating their own heritage, and literary nativism was reborn. By the 1970s Taiwan was in a lower position in the world—it lost seats in many international organizations and was “derecognized” by the United States when formal relations were established with the PRC. These failures abroad forced the Nationalist Party (KMT) to begin a process of Taiwanification—opening the party to more local participation. As this occurred, the Taiwanese began to demand a more equitable system. Soon many local writers were involved in politics. Literature and politics dovetailed in the heated debate on nativism in the late seventies. The status quo saw nativist writers veering too far to the left, and the nativist writers saw the KMT as unwilling to relinquish its dictatorial power and allow local self-determination. In 1979, the Kaohsiung riots occurred to protest KMT meddling in election results. In the end, a number of local writers were imprisoned.

  It was against this explosive backdrop that Li Qiao wrote his trilogy Wintry Night. In the three decades after the arrival of the Nationalist government, local intellectuals began trying to define what it meant to be Taiwanese, to articulate a Taiwanese identity. By reexamining Taiwan’s history from the Qing dynasty through the Japanese occupation, Li Qiao was making an ambitious attempt to textualize, once and for all, what it meant to be Taiwanese. His was not the sole attempt; several other massive historical novels had appeared earlier, such as Wu Zhuoliu’s Asia’s Orphans (Yaxiyade guer) and Zhong Zhaozheng’s Taiwanese Trilogy (Taiwanrende sanbuqu), but none of them was as successful as Wintry Night. Li Qiao’s success is to some extent attributable to the ideological position afforded him by the increasingly liberal political climate of the late seventies and early eighties. Wintry Night is often regarded as a defiant attempt to create an autonomous identity for Taiwan. Even later historical novels such as Yao Jiawen’s The Spectrum of Taiwan: A Record (Taiwan qiseji) were never able to capture the imagination of Taiwan’s readers the way Li Qiao’s novel did.

  Although the work represents a breakthrough of sorts, the Taiwan identity or consciousness articulated in the novel is still largely a masculine construct, and to some degree it is quite reactionary with regard to women and non-Han peoples. Traditional stereotypes inform the depiction of women: while men rule the world, make decisions, and contemplate human destiny and identity, the women rule the roost—they raise the children, provide the food, and live out their lives without ever questioning the religious and social dogmas that govern them. Women are all perceived by the male characters as being weak and in some cases lascivious. Most of the female characters seem to lack consciousness beyond their animal instincts for eating and reproduction, while men seem to be the sole vehicles for consciousness. In the novel—and in traditional society for that matter—women tend to lose their identities after marriage; rarely are they referred to by their own names once they take a husband. Or, perhaps more accurately, their identity is defined by their husband. For example, after Dengmei, the only character—male or female—who plays a major role throughout the entirety of Wintry Night, marries Liu Ahan, she is referred to as “Ahan’s wife,” and after she gives birth to a child she is sometimes called “Mama Ahan.” As time goes by her husband dies and she grows old, but she is referred to as “Auntie Ahan” and “Granny Ahan” by younger members of the family. However, in order to make this translation more readable and less confusing, we have generally used her name, Dengmei, or a phrase like “Ahan’s wife” in place of her many and varied titles. We have adopted this practice for all the female characters in the novel.

  The aborigines tend to be portrayed as just one more impersonal force of nature, much like storms of earthquakes. They too are lacking in any consciousness. Ironically, the Chinese characters in the novel just never seem to understand why the aborigines would want to harm them for taking their land. But with the arrival of the Japanese, the conflicts between Han and non-Han peoples are resolved in their struggle against a common enemy.

  For these reasons, some critics suggest that the novel’s political significance far outweighs its literary significance. But for other critics, Li Qiao’s novel, with its epic scale and historical dimensions, is comparable to great works of literature such as John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath.

  Maui/Monterey, 1999

  Bibliography and Suggested Reading

  Qing-Dynasty Taiwan

  Our summary of Taiwan during the Qing dynasty is drawn directly from John E. Willis, “The Seventeenth-Century Transformation: Taiwan Under the Dutch and the Cheng Regime”; John R. Shepard, “The Island Frontier of the Ch’ing, 1684–1780”; Chen Chiukun, “From Landlords to Local Strongmen: The Transformation of Local Elites in Mid-Ch’ing Taiwan, 1780–1862”; and Robert Gardella, “From Treaty Ports to Provincial Status, 1860–1894” in Murray A. Rubenstein, ed., Taiwan: A New History (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1998).

  Taiwan Under the Japanese

  Our discussion of Taiwan during the Japanese occupation is derived from Harry J. Lamley’s excellent “Taiwan Under Japanese Rule, 1895–1945” in Rubenstein, ed., Taiwan: A New History, and George H. Kerr’s outstanding Formosa: Licensed Revolution and the Home Rule Movement, 1895–1945 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1974).

  The Hakka

  An excellent study of the Hakka is Nicole Constable, ed., Guest People: Hakka Identity in China and Abroad (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1996). We found Constable’s introduction, “What Does It Mean to Be Hakka?,” Myron Cohen’s article, “The Hakka or ‘Guest People’: Dialect as a Sociocultural Variable in Southeast China,” and Howard J. Martin’s “The Hakka Ethnic Minority in Taiwan, 1968–1991” particularly useful and have freely drawn on them in this discussion.

  Aboriginal Peoples

  On Taiwan’s aborigines, we have found Michael Stainton’s essay, “The Politics of Taiwan Aboriginal Origins,” in Rubenstein, ed., Taiwan: A New History very useful. Chen Chi-lu’s Material Culture of the Formosan Aborigines (Taipei: Taiwan Museum, 1968) remains essential reading on the subject.

  Religions

  To us, the best book on local religion in Taiwan (and in much of China and Southeast Asia) is Keith Steven’s Chinese Gods: The Unseen World of Spirits and Demons (London: Collins and Brown, 1997). We have drawn heavily on it in our descriptions of the gods, both local and Buddhist. Another very good book is An Introduction to Taiwanese Folk Religions by Rev. Gerald P. Kramer and George Wu. The book was privately printed in Taiwan in 1970 as a handbook of sorts for missionaries. For more information on Buddhism in China, the reader is referred to Kenneth Ch’en’s standard Buddhism in China: A Historical Survey (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964), as well as the second edition of Sources of Chinese Tradition, compiled by William Theodore de Bary and Irene Bloom (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999). On Shinto, see Professor Lamley’s article, “Taiwan Under the Japanese, 1895–1945” in Rubenstein, ed., Taiwan: A New History.

  Festivals

  The standard work on festivals, religious and secular, in Taiwan is Wine for the Gods by Henry Wei Yi-min and Suzanne Coutanceau (Taipei: Ch’eng Wen Publishing Company, 1976).

  Literary Value and Historical Significance

  For information on Li Qiao’s historical milieu and more on the literature of the postwar period, the reader is advised to see: Thomas B. Gold’s State and Society in the Taiwan Miracle (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1986); Jeannette L. Faurot, ed., Chinese Fiction from Taiwan: Critical Perspectives (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980); and Sung-sheng Yvonne Chang’s Modernism and the Nativist Resistance: Contemporary Fiction from Taiwan (Chapel Hill: Duke University Press, 1993).

  PART ONE

  •

  Wintry Night

  ONE

  •

  The Peng Family Make Their Way to Fanzai Wood

  In the second year of the Qianlong era (1737) of the Qing dynasty, Hakka people from Meixin, Zhenpin, and Lu Feng in Canton province settled in Miaoli, Taiwan. Within ten years, Miaoli became a Hakka market town of moderate size, and it was made county seat in the fifteenth year of the Guangxu era (1889) of the Qing dynasty.

  The County Office was on Miaoli Road; down the street stood the City God’s temple. Miaoli Road led south to the Cowpat Hills, the highest peak of which was Miaoli Mountain; southeast of it lay Tortoise Mountain. The Tortoise Mountain watershed drained into a large river filling Great Lake. Miaoli Road was a yellow dirt track that ran through a pass on Tortoise Mountain and then down the slope following the course of the river. It was traveled by rickshaws and oxcarts, and the twin peaks of Miaoli and Tortoise mountains stood always before the eyes of those journeying up the road.

  A basin extended from the foot of Tortoise Mountain to Guard Post; the central part of the basin was inhabited by settlers from southern Fujian province. The area to the southeast, known as Stone Walls, was inhabited by Hakka who were employed as farm workers. The men were away from home much of the time, so the doors and walls of their homes were fortified against attacks by the native tribespeople. The area got its name from the sturdy stone wall that surrounded the settlement.

  The villages of the tribespeople were located in the mountains beyond Stone Walls. The deeper one ventured into the mountains, the greater the numbers and strength of the natives. There was also a corresponding increase in the danger to travelers. The oxcart road from Miaoli ended at Stone Walls and became a small footpath of yellow earth that wound its way up the slope between the boulders through Bamboo Grove, Mine Pit, Wen Shui, and Water’s End Flat, and finally to the Chinese settlement at Great Lake. The aboriginal villages of Sheyata, Bali, Yeyu, and Mawa were located in the forests on either side of the trail. There were aboriginal lookout posts throughout the area. The land around Great Lake had only just recently been opened to cultivation by the settlers from Meixin, Canton province.

  Early one winter morning, just after the sun had risen, when the mountain wind was particularly cold, Peng Aqiang’s family of seven males and five females and two armed escorts left Stone Walls and set out for Great Lake Village.

  Peng Aqiang placed the spirit tablets of his ancestors into a small basket and lit three sticks of incense. “Ancestors, we are on our way now,” he prayed. “Protect us from all harm on our journey.” He picked up the basket, glanced at his family, then, turning abruptly, led the way, striding out of the house.

  It was very cold. The wind picked up, giving the sun a yellowish cast. On the dirt trail, the wind whipped up the yellow dust raised by the sandal-clad feet of the travelers, making it difficult for them to keep their eyes open. It was the first day of the period known as the Little Cold in the Chinese solar calendar, but the west wind unexpectedly had grown strong. As the folk song says:

  Livestock will perish during the Little Cold

  when the west wind holds sway,

  And all the vegetables and all the grains

  will be put in harm’s way.

  It was not the best of times to be moving, but the time of their departure had been appointed by the Righteous Lords—the lost spirits of the earliest immigrants to Taiwan, who had died without wives or children to carry out postmortuary rites for them—and could not be changed. Even tigers, leopards, dragons, and snakes had to respect their wishes. With the blessings of the gods, a way would be found through the mountains and the rivers would be bridged. What was there to fear?

  Huang Aling, one of the armed escorts, was also the younger brother of the husband of Peng Shunmei, Peng Aqiang’s eldest daughter. Taking the gun he had recently been issued, he hurried to assume his position as advance guard at the head of the column, in front of old Peng Aqiang. Behind their father came Renjie, Peng’s eldest son, and Renxiu, his fourth son, who pushed a wheelbarrow filled with sweet potatoes on top of which all the bedding had been piled. Atop the bedding sat Renjie’s two-year-old son, Dexin. Renjie’s wife, Liangmei, carried Defu, their baby, on her back and walked with one hand on the cart to steady Dexin. Then came Renxing, Peng’s third son, and Renhua, his second son, both of whom carried large baskets. Behind them was Qinmei, Renhua’s wife, who was well on in her pregnancy. She was often out of breath and carried nothing. Lanmei, Peng Aqiang’s wife, came next; she carried three chamberpots with wicker covers over her arms as well as a number of odds and ends in her hands. Trailing behind was Dengmei, the Peng’s foster daughter, who had been purchased at birth for future marriage to one of their sons, as was the custom. She had trouble keeping up with the others because she was carrying the heavy iron cook pot, the earthenware rice pot, and other cooking utensils. Bringing up the rear was Liu Ahan, who, like Huang Aling, was in uniform and carried a long rifle.

  Peng Aqiang was a tall farmer with a full head of white hair, and though getting on in years, he was still hale and hearty. Lanmei, Peng’s wife, was four years his junior. At fifty-four, she walked with a robust stride and was still energetic. Now and then she would take note of how her daughters-in-law plodded along wearily; seeing signs that they were faltering, she shook her head disapprovingly, convinced that they wouldn’t last two hours. “Oh, these women really are useless!” muttered Lanmei under her breath. “If they are like this now, what will they do when we start tilling the new fields in the mountains?” She saw that Renjie and Renxing were both strong as oxen, just like their father when he was a young man. But Renhua and Renxiu were not nearly as strong.

  Looking as if she could go no farther, Qinmei stopped, turned, and spoke to Lanmei. “I don’t think I can go on. Can we stop and rest for a while?”

  “Here?” asked Lanmei, glaring at her.

  “Not here! We only have to pass the mouth of Wen Shui, and Water’s End Flat will be just ahead,” said Renxing.

  “Hey! Hurry up, Water’s End Flat is straight ahead,” said Huang Aling loudly, turning to tell everyone. Summoning all the strength she had, Qinmei picked up her pace. The others, young and old, all pushed on as quickly as they could. In a short while they had reached Wen Shui. The upper reaches of the Wen River were part of the territory of Shabulu and Henglongshan villages. The Shabalu villagers were among the fiercest and most bloodthirsty of the Atayal tribespeople.

  Water’s End Flat was a scant five hundred paces ahead. The people of Shuiwei village lived in two groups there: one in cave dwellings on the cliff above the path along the river, the other in the dense forest that extended up the steep slope to the left of the path. The malakajimu, or head-hunting expeditions, took place without any apparent regard for ritual or season. It was courting disaster to pass through the area; rifles had to be loaded and ready to fire. No one ever considered stopping for a rest there.

  “We’ve almost reached Great Lake Village,” announced Peng Aqiang. “We’ll have our noonday meal there.”

  “I’m exhausted,” complained Liangmei. She had carried one child on her back and had to constantly look after another. All along the way she had gritted her teeth in silent resentment.

  Lanmei wanted to say something to comfort her, but when her eyes fell on her pregnant daughter-in-law’s big belly, she didn’t know what to say.

  “I don’t want to go on, Mom,” shouted Weimei, the Pengs’ youngest daughter. “I don’t want to walk anymore.”

  Everyone was dumbfounded. The women burst into laughter at this, and the pace slackened. But when Peng Aqiang turned around and gave them a stern look, they all stopped smiling and walked faster.

  “Be quiet. If you yell like that again, you’ll be left behind.”

  “All right, all right,” said Weimei as if she were going to make a fuss.

  Lanmei glared angrily at her husband, and as Weimei turned to start walking again her mother gave her one shove, then another. Eighteen-year-old Weimei was pretty as a flower, but rather simple-minded.

  Shunmei, their eldest daughter, had been married to Huang Ajiang, but he had died before his time, leaving her at Stone Walls with a son and daughter. She wondered whether her hardships would ever end. Liangmei, their eldest daughter-in-law, was the sister of Huang Ajiang and Huang Aling. Having exchanged daughters, the Pengs and the Huangs were bound by marriage. For generations, “marriage exchanges” such as those practiced by the Pengs and Huangs had been common practice among farm laborers. It worked well, everybody did it.