Loa Ho () (28 May 1894 – 31 January 1943) was a Taiwanese

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral or writte ...

who was born in Changhua County,

Taiwan Prefecture Taiwan Prefecture or Taiwanfu was a prefecture of Taiwan during the Qing dynasty. The prefecture was established by the Qing government in 1684, after the island came under Qing dynasty rule in 1683 following its conquest of the Kingdom of Tungnin ...

Fujian-Taiwan Province Taiwan Province (; PFS: ''Thòi-vàn-sén'' or ''Thòi-vân-sén'') is a nominal administrative division of the Republic of China (ROC). Its definition has remained part of the Constitution of the Republic of China, but the province is no long ...

Qing dynasty The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing,, was a Manchu-led imperial dynasty of China and the last orthodox dynasty in Chinese history. It emerged from the Later Jin dynasty founded by the Jianzhou Jurchens, a Tungusic-speak ...

(modern-day

Changhua Changhua (Hokkien POJ: ''Chiong-hòa'' or ''Chiang-hòa''), officially known as Changhua City, is a county-administered city and the county seat of Changhua County in Taiwan Province of the Republic of China. For many centuries the site was h ...

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...

). He was a

medical doctor A physician (American English), medical practitioner (Commonwealth English), medical doctor, or simply doctor, is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through th ...

but had enormous fame in literature. His

poetry Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings i ...

works were especially praised, and Lai was commonly known as one of Taiwan's most representative poets. He is also hailed as the "Father of Modern Taiwanese Literature".

Early life

Loa's work can broadly be divided into three phases. During his early career, he wrote primarily classical Chinese poetry. On a sojourn as a doctor in a Japanese hospital in Amoy (now called

Xiamen Xiamen ( , ; ), also known as Amoy (, from Hokkien pronunciation ), is a sub-provincial city in southeastern Fujian, People's Republic of China, beside the Taiwan Strait. It is divided into six districts: Huli, Siming, Jimei, Tong'an, ...

), a treaty port in China, he became acquainted with the work of Chinese May Fourth writers such as

Lu Hsun Zhou Shuren (25 September 1881 – 19 October 1936), better known by his pen name Lu Xun (or Lu Sun; ; Wade–Giles: Lu Hsün), was a Chinese writer, essayist, poet, and literary critic. He was a leading figure of modern Chinese literature. W ...

. Although his stay in China seems to have been depressing, he returned to Taiwan with the intention to contribute to Taiwan's cultural scene. He opened a reading room in his clinic where he provided Chinese vernacular fiction and Japanese periodicals. This reading room allowed him to mentor several essential writers of the late Japanese colonial period. Most of his writing during this second period was nativist in his choice of themes and satirical in form. Through several short stories written during the 1920s and early 1930s, Loa satirized the brutality of colonial policemen, the indifference of the populace, and the impotence of native intellectuals. During the third period, Loa became more nativist in orientation and actively experimented with writing in

Taiwanese Hokkien Taiwanese Hokkien () (; Tâi-lô: ''Tâi-uân-uē''), also known as Taigi/Taigu (; Pe̍h-ōe-jī/Tâi-lô: ''Tâi-gí / Tâi-gú''), Taiwanese, Taiwanese Minnan, Hoklo and Holo, is a variety of the Hokkien language spoken natively by about 70% ...

. Although these experiments were not entirely successful, they expressed an emerging Taiwanese national consciousness upon which later Taiwanese writers would build.

Political activity and legacy

In addition to his writing, Loa participated in the

Taiwanese Cultural Association The Taiwanese Cultural Association (TCA; ) was an important organization during the Japanese rule of Taiwan. It was founded by Chiang Wei-shui on 17 October 1921, in Daitōtei, a district in modern-day Taipei. History After World War I, an epid ...

and other activist groups. His political activity led to his arrest and a subsequent illness contracted in jail, which caused his early demise. Japanese wartime strictures on writing in languages other than the national language forced him to stop his literary output slightly before his death. He was an influence on his younger contemporaries

Yang Kui Yang Kui (; 18 October 1905 – 12 March 1985) or Yō Ki was a prominent writer in Japanese Taiwan. Raised in Japanese-language schools, he went to the Japanese mainland, where he experienced both persecution and acceptance, especially by Japanese ...

and

Wu Chuo-liu Wu Chuo-liu (), born Wu Jiantian () (2 June 1900, Xinpu, Hsinchu – 7 October 1976, Taipei?) was an influential Taiwanese journalist and novelist of Hakka ancestry. He has been described as the most powerful witness to history in Taiwanese lett ...

. His rediscovery during the late 1970s and early 1980s also contributed to Taiwan's new nativist literature.

Literature works

Source:

Fiction

* * * * * * * * * Also

Poetry

* Poems in: Taiwan Literature, English Translation Series 15 (2004): 165–76.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lai, He 1894 births 1943 deaths Male poets 20th-century Taiwanese poets People from Changhua County Taiwanese people of Hakka descent Taiwanese prisoners and detainees Taiwanese male short story writers Prisoners and detainees of Japan 20th-century Taiwanese physicians