Off River Township Office - Zhu Tianxin Novels - Approval

Zhu Tianxin is one of the most important contemporary writers in Taiwan. She began writing in the early1970s and her writing career has lasted for forty years. The special identity, a child born in the military dependents’village, makes her focus on ethnic issues of Taiwan for quite a long time. She always insists to write stories she knows. So her fictions have become the best material to observe the Mainlanders’identity.By reading we can find that Zhu Tianxin expressed nostalgia for the Chinese mainland in her early works. This nostalgia came from the past stories told by her father and the charm of Chinese culture represented by Hu Lancheng. At that time, Zhu Tianxin’s creations were full of deep love of china. Such feelings also extended to Kuomintang who was regarded as the legal regime of Republic of China and the party’s leader. But due to the special political environment, Zhu Tianxin who were born and grew up in Taiwan’s had no chance to come to mainland China before1987.As a result, the love was very abstract. The one which she had close relation to is the military dependents’ village, the symbol and substitute of mainland China. There were two most common scenes in Zhu Tianxin’s early works. One was the campus, and the other was the military dependents’village. But she was criticized for not writing about Taiwan.The dream of going back to the mainland broke. The mainlanders had to consider setting down in Taiwan. As the time went by, Taiwan had become more and more like hometown. Zhu Tianxin began to focus on the political and social situation in Taiwan. But her sensitive identity as the second-generation of mainlanders and the sharp words used in her novels made her the target of public criticism. The contradictions between literature and politics, the suspicion after the lost of faith and the interference brought by the past all contributed to making Zhu Tianxin politically incorrect.When Zhu Tianxin believed there was no doubt that she belonged to Taiwan, she realized a fact anxiously that Taiwan refused her. The military dependents were regarded as those with vested interests. And their history was wiped out because it didn’t meet the demand of mainstream. Zhu Tianxin tried to save her memory by writing and protecte it from being falsified. Clarifying her position again and again but always being questioned, Zhu Tianxin began to pursue freedom of not loving Taiwan and discussed this issue in her books.As a second-generation mainlander, Zhu Tianxin always faces the confusion: where is her hometown:mainland China, military dependents’village, Taipei City or a foreign country? Where does she belong to?...