Taipei People

By Pai Hsien-yung 

Translated by Patia Yasin

(1971, translated 1982)

(Short Story Collection)

Mr. Pai writes about Mainland Chinese who fled the Red Army and escaped to Taiwan. There are fourteen short stories in this collection, which is a dual-language text. The stories were written in the last half of the 1960s and first published in 1971. All of the characters are almost excruciatingly conscious of their memories before their flight from their homes; these thoughts reckon frequently in their attempts to comprehend their failures and achievements as displaced persons in a society that regards them as outsiders. There are fourteen stories in this collection, which have been compared to James Joyce’s Dubliners. Some of the titles are “The Eternal Snow Beauty,” “The Dirge of Liang Fu,” “The Last Night of Taipan Chin,” and “Glories by Blossom Bridge.” Many of the texts are about Kuomintang officers adjusting to low-status positions; many more are about Mainland Chinese women working as “taxi dancers” or madams in brothels. Mr. Pai has an eye and sensitivity for the people of the demimonde, writing of the homosexual community working in Taipei’s dynamic motion picture industry in “A Sky Full of Bright, Twinkling Stars.”

“Have you ever seen such a lewd, demonic moon before? Like an immense ball of flesh, bloodshot, floating up there, flesh-red. In the park, human shadows flickered, circled around wildly like the images on a revolving lantern. Dark-and-Handsome was sitting there on a stone balustrade, decked out in a tight-fitting scarlet t-shirt, black Bermuda shorts, and sandals. Head in the air, legs swinging, he was showing off like a little peacock spreading its tail for the first time. He’d just landed a small part in Dawn of Spring, directed by Old Man Mo. In front of the cameras for the first time in his life, he damn near forgot who he was.” (322 “A Sky Full of Bright, Twinkling Stars”)