Hovering Between East And The West: The Gender Discoursing And Homesick In Pai Hsien-yung's Works

The deep love to his mother caused Pai Hsien-yung to describe many kinds of feminine images in his work, representing a master line:"the feminine, mother, native land, the mother tongue, homesick". The leading female character, regardless the native Chinese women or those who lived in the foreign land another region Chinese female, all hold a contradictory point of view to the gender localization of the traditional culture and the western culture. Those feminine images which are aggressive or metropolis after the body liberating represented Pai Hsien-yung`s modern construction of the traditional Chinese women. Perhaps as a male writer, simultaneously a homosexual, Mr. Pai hoped to reconsider the entire Chinese gender ideology through the significance to female under the Chinese culture and the western culture. At the same time, having the living experience of the mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong, the USA, Pai Hsien-yung accepted the cultural influence not only from China, but also the west. He combined the western modernism spirit crisis and the Chinese traditional culture organically, and described the culture conflicts especially the contradiction of the ethics by anglicizing the"Chinese community", husband's authority and "the father" image under verity of values options. On the other hand, based on the "root consciousness" of homeland, Pai Hsien-yung imagined and reconstructed the Chinese original township through the works "the New York Guests" and "the Taipei People". By discussing the three important aspects: the Chinese female, the Chinese ethic, and the Chinese land, simultaneously combating with the living environment, this paper tries to reveal the gender discourse and the culture identity under the conflict of the different culture between the east and west.