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Cities and Literature – “Colonies and Cities” Publishing by the Top University Group
2015-03-16

The work “Colonies and Cities”, chiefly edited by professor Fang-ming Chen, Graduate Institute of Taiwanese Literature, National Chengchi University (NCCU), was officially announced during the Taipei International Book Exhibition (TIBE).
“Colonies and Cities” was published in the end of 2014 while it was announced at the TIBE in 2015. Professor Chen compiled the works from 8 scholars and led the readers to glance at the mutual influence between the city modernity and literature of eastern Asia.

There were 8 pieces of essay done by the top university group “The Modernization and Transition of Modern Art and literature” under the top university scheme “The Formation of Modern China”. Fang-ming Chen, convenor of the groups, said that the group members came from various campuses and had different study fields such as theater, movies, novels, poetry, Korean and Japanese literature. Hence, the open space of interaction was formed.

The essays complied in “Colonies and Cities” were strongly linked up to modernity and modernism of literature. Professor Chen explained that “modernity” was the performance of rationality while the different modernity would be developed in one city on account of various backgrounds and cultures as well as traditions.

He gave an example as following. Tokyo stood for the modernity of an empire while Shanghai was the modernity of a concession territory and Seoul and Taipei were the modernity of a colony. Owing to different reigned history there existed a variety of appearances and developments.

Take the “time” for instance. In the past most Taiwanese lived with the principle of sunrise and sunset and they had no real time system until the second year of Japan’s reign the Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) was introduced to Taiwan. The introduction of the precise time was the symbol of the modernity; however, this modernity wasn’t form by itself and thus it’s a kind of colonial modernity.

Modernism of literature was a sort of performing way of art and put emphasis on inner world of human beings like reminiscences and desires as well as emotions. Nonetheless, professor Chen thought that the writing point came back to human itself would bring about the oppressed, abandoned, ruined disposition of literature if people expressed the colonial modernity through the literature.

“Colonies and Cities” primarily covered Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and China. Of these areas South Korea and Taiwan were colonies of Japan and plenty of regions of mainland China were also occupied by Japan. Nevertheless, Japan was also colonized by the European countries and the U.S. Beside the angle of colonization, professor Chen and his group found the vital status of the “cities” in the modernism literature as well. Because of the dense population and the convenient transportation cities became the birth place of modernism. Namely, without cities there’s no modernism literature.

Professor Chen hoped that via this book readers could further understand the colonial characters that Taiwanese owned before, and courageously faced the past after they realized the history, and established the Taiwanese culture belonged to themselves on basis of the past.

Directly facing the readers, group members (authors) Ta-wei Chi and Pei-chen Wu would organize the lecture “Gender and Colony” at TIBE on 14 Feb., 2015. Professor Chen announced in advance that the group members would keep cooperating with one another and continue exploring and exchanging their own fields; what’s more, there’re still two works planned to co-publish in the future.

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