By reading extensively the works of postwar Taiwan fiction in English translation, this course aims at exploring the urban experience as reflected in the Taiwan fiction from 1949 to the end of the 20th century. The focus, of course, should be Taipei, but we also include the Peking of Lin Hai-yin [林海音], the New York and Chicago of Pai Hsien-yung [白先勇], and the Kaohsiung of Yang Ch’ing-ch’u [楊青矗].

This course can be seen as divided into two parts. First, after the introduction after the first week, the first group of assigned readings include works of writers from different periods: Lin Hai-yin of the 50s (Memories of Peking), Pai Hsien-yung (Crystal Boys) of the Modernist 60s, Chen Ying-chen (the “Washington Building” series stories) and Huang Chun-ming (“The Young Widow”) of the Nativist-realist 70s, and Haung Fan (“Tung-pu Street” and “Rainy Night”) and Chang Ta-chun (“A Guided Tour of the Apartment Complex,” “Alley 116, Liaoning Street,” and Wild Kids) of the urban-fiction 80s.

The second group of readings focuses on five different themes, which are “the city and marriage,” “the city and labor,” “the city and politics,” “the city and compounds of military families,” and “the city and consumption.” The first theme explores city people’s problems of extramarital affairs and divorce, the second the problems the working class in the city faces, the third and fourth the political aspects of city life after the 1987 lift of martial law in Taiwan, and, finally, the fifth the consumption culture in the fin-de-siecle city. The writers included in this groups are Li Ang [李昂], the Chu sisters [朱天文與朱天心], Hsiao Sa [蕭颯], Yang Ch’ing-ch’u [楊青矗], and Chang Chi-jiang [張啟疆].