Wintry Night Read online

  In 1920 reforms were introduced to the government, which enabled more local autonomy through councils at the lower levels of government. The councils were appointed by the colonial authorities, but this did allow for marginal participation in government by the local elite. Taiwanese political movements and organizations learned to work within the system; home rule was proposed, and liberal elements within the Japanese government went so far as to request Taiwanese representation in the Diet in the late ’20s.

  But the increasingly liberal political climate was to change in 1936 after Admiral Kobayashi Seizo became the seventeenth governor-general. To prepare for Japan’s military expansion in Asia and the Pacific, Kobayashi instituted an industrialization policy and an assimilation policy, both of which were strengthened by the governors-general who succeeded him. New factories were built, volunteer labor was mobilized, and by 1942, an army volunteer system was implemented, as is well detailed in Wintry Night. By the end of the war, 207,183 island residents had been conscripted for military duty—80,433 servicemen and 126,750 civilian employees. Most were sent to Hainan island in China, Southeast Asia, and the South Pacific.

  The assimilation policy involved a number of measures, including making Japanese the only official language for media use. By the end of the war, about half of the population was literate in Japanese. In 1940 there was a name-changing campaign in which local residents were encouraged to take Japanese names. By the end of the war, only about 7 percent of the population had complied. All those who took part were given Japanese rations.

  With Japan’s surrender in 1945, at first no one was sure what Taiwan’s status was to be—colony or province of China. Japanese officials were reviled, and many collaborators were attacked. Overseas, Taiwanese army volunteers were abandoned. Many were killed; others died from disease or starvation before they could be repatriated, a process that took months, during which volunteers were kept in prisons. Those who returned home did so without fanfare or honor. It is on this note that Wintry Night ends.

  The Hakka

  Wintry Night is a novel of Taiwan’s history, but perhaps more specifically, a novel of the role played by the Hakka in that history. Li Qiao, the author, is himself a Hakka.

  But who are the Hakka? The term “Hakka” literally means “guest people.” They are a Chinese ethnic group who, like all Han Chinese, are believed to have originated in north central China, but who migrated south in the fourth century in conjunction with the flight of the Jin dynasty. By the fourteenth century, they had populated China’s southeastern provinces, especially Guangdong and Fujian. Today, most of them live in southeast China, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia.

  The Hakka are somewhat paradoxical: they consider themselves preservers of traditional Han culture, but they also consider themselves a distinct ethnic group. Their customs and language—they speak their own dialect of Chinese—distinguish them from their neighbors. Language has been one of the most important differences, but even when the language diminishes, as is happening today, the identity persists. There are in reality few cultural differences that set the Hakka apart from other Han Chinese. They perceive themselves as different, and this apparent clannishness is a typical sterotype. But in the People’s Republic, they are simply considered part of the Han majority.

  Self-perception of identity is the key. The Hakkas’ identity was first formed when they existed as a poor underclass of peasant laborers in southeast China, and later in Taiwan. Their unique experiences in Taiwan, for example, account for many aspects of their identity. Many came late to Taiwan and were forced to settle in the less promising hills and mountainous regions, where they worked as woodsmen, often intermarrying with the aborigines. They are known for a pioneering spirit; in fact, they were responsible for opening up much of Taiwan’s mountainous interior during the Qing dynasty and for developing such industries as Taiwan’s lucrative camphor trade. It has been estimated that most of the mountain frontiersmen and as much as one quarter of the entire frontier population were Hakka; nowhere else in China did the Hakka ever make up such a large proportion of the population. Today they account for approximately 5 percent of Taiwan’s population.

  As pioneers they were often seen as poor, hard-working farmers able to withstand the dangers and deprivations of frontier life, much as they do in Li Qiao’s novel. It is also widely held among Hakka and non-Hakka alike that Hakka women are especially hard-working. In Qing times, they were certainly different from other women: they participated in agricultural work alongside the men, they did not bind their feet, and they had a degree of freedom generally seen only among non-Han minorities. This attitude is borne out in the depiction of women in Li Qiao’s novel.

  Fiercely independent, the Hakka are also known for steadfast loyalty and readiness to fight. They fought the aborigines as they opened up Taiwan’s mountainous interior; they fought antistate rebels and foreigners in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; and they offered the most resistance to the Japanese occupation. In fact, it took the Japanese years to quell Hakka armed resistance.

  The stereotypes of the Hakka as clannish, thrifty, loyal to each other, and ready fighters are integral features to characterization in Wintry Night. The main characters—Peng Aqiang, his wife, Lanmei, their foster daughter, Dengmei, her husband, Liu Ahan, and their son Liu Mingji—all exhibit these characteristics. They work hard and live frugally for a small bit of land to call their own. Also, they have a strong sense of justice, and fight for what they believe in: they fight against predatory landlords as well as the Japanese invaders. The idea of clannishness, or ethnic unity, is also strongly developed. So, when Huang Huosheng takes on the Japanese name of Nozawa Saburo during the Japanization campaigns, he basically rejects his ethnic heritage, forsakes his language, and opts to become Japanese. Of course, he is depicted as a traitor, not only to Taiwan but to his own ethnicity.

  The Aboriginal Peoples

  The aborigines of Taiwan are Austronesian peoples, and evidence suggests that they have lived in Taiwan for at least fifteen thousand years. There are three theories as to their origins. The first, called the theory of southern origin, suggests that they originated in Southeast Asia and spread north and east. The second, called the theory of northern origin, suggests that they originated in China. A third and more recent theory suggests that Taiwan itself is the Austronesian homeland. This theory rests largely on linguistic evidence: Taiwan has the greatest concentration of Austronesian languages—about a dozen extant and a dozen extinct.

  Taiwan’s aborigines are generally divided into two main groups: the plains peoples and the mountain peoples. The plains peoples, who are now all extinct, once consisted of fourteen tribes. They lived on the coastal plains and were exterminated, assimilated, or driven into the mountains by the Han Chinese. There are eight mountain tribes, all of which still exist in Taiwan—the Saisiyat, Atayal, Ami, Bunan, Tsou, Puyuma, Rukai, and Paiwan. (The only surviving nonmountain tribe is the Yami, a tribe that lives on Lanyu Island, one of Taiwan’s offshore islands.) They live largely in the mountainous regions of the island and have been able to maintain their cultural identities.

  The Atayal tribe is the one tribe of mountain aborigines that is mentioned in Wintry Night. The Atayal people lived and still live primarily in central Taiwan in dispersed villages or hamlets known as she, a word that has simply been rendered as “village” in this translation. In general, their homes were made of wood, bamboo, and reeds. They lived by hunting and gathering and practiced agriculture by shifting methods—that is, they would burn off a piece of land and cultivate it for three to five years, then move on to another area. The Atayal were also known for a number of social initiation customs. For example, when young people reached puberty they would receive tattoos signaling their official entry into tribal life. Young men and women would also have their two upper lateral incisors knocked out. The reason was said to be that since they were no longer children, they must cease to resemble monkeys and dogs.

  The Atayal were the most resistant to Han, and later Japanese, incursions into their territory. They were famous for their warlike nature. In fact, the Atayal practiced head-hunting, not just as a form of fighting enemies but also as a rite of initiation for young men. It is said that a man was not allowed to marry until he brought in a head. Often, though, dispensations were granted for killing deer and boar. Of the many uprisings led by the Atayal, none is more famous than the Wushe incident, which occurred on October 27, 1930, during the Japanese occupation. The incident arose over a cultural misunderstanding. Japanese officials at Wushe were invited to participate in a party but refused, saying the utensils were too dirty. Feeling insulted, the Atayal were angered and ended up thrashing one of the Japanese. That night, the Atayal men discussed the matter and decided that since they would probably be punished by the colonial officials they should make a preemptive strike against the Japanese. Eleven tribal villages attacked the Japanese at Wushe, killing 135 and injuring 215. The Japanese responded by sending in the police and the army. The villagers withdrew to a well-fortified place in the mountains, where a force of 1,163 policemen, 800 soldiers, and 1,381 mercenaries using cannon and machine guns could not dislodge them. The siege lasted about 50 days. Finally, the Japanese resorted to poison gas. In the end, more than 900 tribespeople were killed, as well as 49 Japanese and 22 aboriginal mercenaries.

  Religions

  The three religions mentioned in Wintry Night are the Taoist, or folk religion; Buddhism; and Japanese Shinto.

  When the first settlers came to Taiwan from the coastal provinces of Fujian and Guangdong, they brought with them their diverse gods. These form the pantheon of Taiwan’s so-called local religion, also termed Taoist. All together, it is said that there are approximately 250 gods worshipped in Taiwan. The pantheon exists in a heavenly bureaucratic hierarchy that mirrors the old imperial system. Naturally, certain gods are more widely worshipped than others. Of the seven deities mentioned in Wintry Night, the City God, Matsu, the Earth God, Guan Ti, and Guang Yin are among the ten most widely venerated.

  The local religion is the most colorful, and it is certainly one of the most striking aspects of life in Taiwan today. Religious festivals, especially the birthdays of deities, can be gigantic affairs with prodigious quantities of food as well as opera performances. Local gods are given offerings and are regularly petitioned by worshippers to solve problems and, through divination, to foretell the future. Many are worshipped for specific reasons or by specific occupational groups.

  The gods mentioned in the novel include:

  1. The City God: The tutelary deity of the capital and all provincial and major counties and towns. A temple to the City God can be found in all large towns. His temple is considered a celestial yamen, and counterpart to the actual city yamen. Thus in the novel, Miaoli, an important city, is depicted as possessing both a county office and a City God temple. The City God is supposed to bring prosperity to urban dwellers, bring rain, drive away disease, and control evil spirits.

  2. The Righteous Lords: The wandering spirits of the dead who have no wives or descendants to carry out ritual sacrifices for them. In general, these are the spirits of the earliest settlers in Taiwan, who died alone in frontier conditions. It is widely considered a Taiwanese, but also Hakka and Cantonese, cult. Temples to the Righteous Lords are extremely common in the Xinzhu area of central Taiwan, the setting for Wintry Night.

  3. Matsu: Probably the best-known guardian deity for seafarers. Given Taiwan’s close connection with the sea, it should come as little surprise that she is widely considered the patron goddess of the island. As a virgin goddess, she is a maternal protectress of women and a fertility deity of sorts. Worship of Matsu began in Fujian, one of China’s southern coastal provinces, in the tenth century, and her position was sanctioned by imperial order during the Qing dynasty. From Fujian, her popularity spread to Guangdong province and to Taiwan, where hundreds of temples are dedicated to her today. The mother temple for the worship of Matsu is located in Beigang, in central Taiwan, and is host to one of the island’s largest religious festivals celebrating the goddess’s birthday.

  4. The Earth God: One of the most widely encountered of all local deities. His temples are found throughout China, and small shrines to him can be seen in fields and farming communities throughout Taiwan. He is prayed to as the bringer of prosperity, fortune, and wealth.

  5. Guan Ti: Also known by his personal name of Guan Yu, is one of the three heroes of the Three Kingdoms (221–263). He is all things to all people: prayed to for protection and prosperity and to solve all problems, personal, domestic, national, and universal.

  Buddhism is also mentioned in the novel, as are a couple of bodhisattvas. The Buddhist practice depicted in the novel involves the recitation of popular sutras such as the Amithaba Sutra and the popular twenty-fifth chapter of the Lotus Sutra. Millions have sought release from human suffering by chanting these sutras. The Pure Land Sect, one of the most popular in China, emphasizes salvation by faith, and the recitation of sutras is central to devotional practice.

  Two bodhisattvas, Buddhist deities who have renounced nirvana to help save all sentient beings, are also mentioned in the book:

  1. Kuanyin bodhisattva or the Goddess of Mercy: Certainly one of the most widely worshipped Buddhist deities. She is so popular that she has become a goddess to handle all problems: she is the giver of male children, a comforter of the sick and dying, and also the protector of seafarers, farmers, and travelers. But one of her most important tasks is to care for the souls of the dead, and in this capacity she is also invoked in Taoist ritual. Perhaps the most important Buddhist text devoted to her is chapter 25 of the Lotus Sutra, which is titled “The Gateway to Everywhere of the Bodhisattva, She Who Observes the Sounds of the World.”

  2. Earth Store bodhisattva: The savior of souls in the underworld; one of the more popular Buddhist deities. He is said to have overcome death and devoted himself to helping others do the same. Like Kuanyin, he is a compassionate deity and a protector of the dying and the dead, especially chldren. It is said that he roams the underworld preaching Buddhist doctrine and that when he encounters a repentant soul, he can have its punishment reduced. Worshippers pray to him on behalf of recently deceased relatives so that he might quickly lead their souls through the court of the underworld. There also is a popular sutra dedicated to him.

  In Wintry Night, Japanese Shinto is mentioned only in a passing reference to a Shinto shrine at Great Lake Village. During the last decade of the Japanese occupation, Governor-General Kobayashi intensified efforts to establish the Japanese state religion, Shintoism, on Taiwan. Local religion was suppressed in some cases and religious statues were removed from temples and the buildings torn down. The Taiwanese were encouraged to maintain household Shinto shrines and worship amulets from the Ise Shrine in Japan, and there was a great deal of pressure to revere Shinto shrines and the imperial palace from afar. Rituals were practiced on an increasingly more massive scale throughout the period.

  Festivals

  China and Taiwan are rich in traditional festivals. Just a few appear in Wintry Night, and they include:

  1. The Lantern Festival: This takes place on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month and is also called the “small new year.” Traditionally, the day is used to honor the gods. Families prepare sacrifices and worship the gods, asking them for blessings. People also worship their ancestor tablets. In some areas, the Earth God statue is placed in a sedan chair and carried from business to business for blessings.

  2. Birthday of the Earth God: A holiday of great importance for merchants and anyone else concerned about prosperity. In general, a family will make offerings, set off firecrackers, and eat a meal to celebrate the god’s birthday. Merchants make an even bigger deal of the occasion, often inviting their employees to dinner.

  3. The Dragon Boat Festival: The fifth day of the fifth month; generally a large festival. At mid-day, every family prepares various offerings, especially a special type of steamed dumpling called a zhongzi. With these, the family prays to the gods and worships their ancestors. The festival takes place as spring is turning to summer, a dangerous time when many evils lurk.

  4. New Year’s Eve: The biggest and liveliest occasion in the Chinese calendar. It is about as important as Christmas in the West. In general, a family will gather for a huge meal that will hopefully set the tone for the new year, making it one of abundance and good fortune. After the meal, it is time for gift giving, which generally means distributing coins to the younger members of the family.

  Literary Value and Historical Significance

  This introduction began with the statement that Wintry Night is one of the classics of contemporary Taiwanese literature. It has been accorded this status for a number of reasons. It was one of the first modern novels to deal with the uniqueness of the Taiwanese experience and to explore the nature of Taiwanese consciousness and identity as it has emerged through history. In some ways the perceptions in the novel tell us as much about Taiwan in the early eighties as they do about the island’s history. Wintry Night also appeared at a critical juncture in contemporary Taiwanese history. The island had always been treated as a marginal area, first during the imperial period and then during the colonial period, and it was again stifled under the KMT. Li Qiao’s work appeared just when the Taiwanese were really starting to reconsider their past during the liberalization of the late seventies and early eighties. This gave the novel a political and historical significance that some believe far outweighs its literary value.

  To understand the significance of the novel as a literary work, it is necessary to understand something of Taiwan’s literary and cultural heritage. Until Taiwan was ceded to Japan, classical literature and the imperial exam system were the foundations of education and culture for the island. After Taiwan became a colony of Japan, that system was abandoned in favor of modern education in which science was of paramount importance, and, of course, instruction in modern vernacular Japanese.