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In 1930, in the mountains of Taiwan, the Atayal tribe rose up against the Japanese colonial regime. The Japanese response brought the tribe to the brink of genocide. Wu He investigates the atrocity in this milestone of Chinese experimental literature. Shifting among observations about the people the author meets, philosophical musings, and fantastical leaps of imagination,
Remains of Life is a powerful literary reckoning with one of the darkest chapters in Taiwan's colonial history.
List of contents
Introduction
Remains of Life
Afterword
Notes
About the author
Wu He is a native of Tainan, Taiwan, and came to prominence in 1974 with the publication of his award-winning short story, "Peony Autumn." He spent much of the 1980s and 1990s in seclusion before returning to the literary world with a string of powerful and challenging books, including
Digging for Bones (1995),
The Sea at Seventeen (1997),
Wu He Danshui (2001),
Ghost and Goblin (2005), and
Chaos and Confusion (2007), and has won nearly every major national literary award upon its publication in Taiwan.
Michael Berry is professor of modern Chinese literature and film at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of, among others, Speaking in Images: Interviews with Contemporary Chinese Filmmakers (2005) and
A History of Pain: Trauma in Modern Chinese Literature and Film (2008), and the translator of several novels, including
Wild Kids: Two Novels About Growing Up (2000),
Nanjing 1937: A Love Story (2002), and, with Susan Chan Egan,
The Song of Everlasting Sorrow: A Novel of Shanghai (2008), all from Columbia University Press.
Summary
"On October 27, 1930 during an annual sports meet held at Musha Elementary School on an aboriginal reservation deep in the mountains of Taiwan there occurred a bloody uprising unlike anything Japan had ever witnessed in its colonial history. Before noon the Atayal tribe had summarily slain one hundred and thirty-four Japanese in a headhunting ritual that shook the very foundations of Japan's colonial empire. The Japanese responded to what would later become known as the "Musha Incident" with a militia of three thousand, heavy artillery, airplanes, and internationally banned poisonous gas. The Atayal of Musha were brought to the brink of genocide. Nearly seventy years later, Chen Guocheng, a writer best known by his poetic penname Wu He, or "Dancing Crane," traveled to Musha to investigate the long forgotten Musha Incident and search for the "remains of life" - the survivors of the incident and their descendants. Exploring the impetus behind this disturbing historical event and questioning its legitimacy and accuracy, Wu He walks a tightrope between the primitive and the civilized, beauty and violence, fact and fiction. The result is Remains of Life, a powerful and disturbing literary voyage into perhaps the darkest chapter of Taiwan's colonial history. This one-of-a-kind work is a milestone in Chinese literature and marks the arrival of a major literary voice in the Chinese speaking world. Upon its publication in Taiwan, the novel was awarded virtually every major national literary award including the Taipei Creative Writing Award for Literature, The China Times' Ten Best Books of the Year Award, The United Daily Readers' Choice Award, Ming Pao's Ten Best Books of the Year Award, and the Kingstone Award for Most Influential Book of the Year" --
