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Wu Chuo-liu (), born Wu Jiantian () (2 June 1900,
Xinpu, Hsinchu Xinpu Township (; also known as Hsinpu) is an urban township in Hsinchu County, Taiwan. History Xinpu was formerly known as ''Baliguo'' (), a commercial center during the Jiaqing Emperor rule of Qing Dynasty. Geography Area: Population: 33 ...
– 7 October 1976,
Taipei Taipei (), officially Taipei City, is the capital and a special municipality of the Republic of China (Taiwan). Located in Northern Taiwan, Taipei City is an enclave of the municipality of New Taipei City that sits about southwest of the n ...
?) was an influential
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 ...
ese
journalist A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalism ...
and
novelist A novelist is an author or writer of novels, though often novelists also write in other genres of both fiction and non-fiction. Some novelists are professional novelists, thus make a living writing novels and other fiction, while others aspire to ...
of
Hakka The Hakka (), sometimes also referred to as Hakka Han, or Hakka Chinese, or Hakkas are a Han Chinese subgroup whose ancestral homes are chiefly in the Hakka-speaking provincial areas of Guangdong, Fujian, Jiangxi, Guangxi, Sichuan, Hunan, Zhej ...
ancestry. He has been described as the most powerful witness to history in Taiwanese letters. Many of his most important novels were first written in Japanese.


Life and work

His family was long established in Xinpu County, which is located approximately 60 km Southwest of Taipei. His grandfather, Wu Fangxin, was a well-known traditional poet. He began with a standard Chinese education but, due to the Japanese occupation, most of his studies were conducted in the Japanese manner. In 1916, he was admitted to the "" (). In 1919, he visited Japan for the first time on a school trip that lasted 18 days—it was an eye opener. He graduated in 1920 and became a teacher in the public schools. After publishing an article called "School and Autonomy", he was labeled a radical by the Japanese government and transferred to a village school in
Miaoli County Miaoli County (Mandarin Pinyin: ''miáo lì xiàn''; Hakka PFS: ''Mèu-li̍t-yen''; Hokkien POJ: ''Biâu-le̍k-koān'' or ''Miâu-le̍k-koān'') is a county in western Taiwan. Miaoli is adjacent with Hsinchu County and Hsinchu City to the nort ...
. In 1927, he joined the , a group that would produce some of Taiwan's best known modern poets. Ten years later, he managed to secure an appointment as "" of the schools in Guanxi, but he resigned in 1940, following an incident in which the teachers were insulted by the Japanese authorities. In 1941, he went to mainland China and worked as a reporter in Nanjing for ''Mainland'' ''News'' (大陸新聞). He stayed in China for 15 months and returned home in 1943 and took a position with the '. These experiences served as the inspiration for his most famous work, '' Orphan of Asia'', a semi-autobiographical account of the experiences of a fictional protagonist named Hu Taiming () during the course of the colonial period. This work, which highlighted the ambiguity and tension inherent in being Taiwanese, has since become a key text in the contentious subject of Taiwanese identity. He is also known for his autobiography ''The Fig Tree'' (). After the war, he continued his journalistic work at the ', but the political repression that followed the February 28 incident of 1947 forced him to abandon this line of work for seven years. During that time, he served as director of the . In 1964, Wu was one of the founders of the magazine ', which served as a starting point for many of Taiwan's young aspiring writers. At that time though, emphasizing Taiwanese identity was still politically controversial and Wu was pressured by the authorities to drop 'Taiwan' from the title of his magazine. He demurred: "what I want to promote is Taiwan native literature and arts.  Drop 'Taiwan' rom the titleand the whole venture loses its meaning". The title stayed. In 1969, using money from his own pension, Wu established the Taiwan Literature Award (台灣文學獎) – it was later renamed the . It remains one of Taiwans's prestigious literary awards to this day. He died in 1976, following a brief illness.


Bibliography

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References

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External links


WU ZHUOLIU ARCHIVE
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Research Center for Humanities and Social Sciences at National Chung Hsin University, Taiwan
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wu, Zhouliu 20th-century Taiwanese poets Hakka writers Taiwanese people of Hakka descent People from Hsinchu County 20th-century Taiwanese educators Taiwanese male novelists 1900 births 1976 deaths 20th-century novelists Taiwanese schoolteachers 20th-century male writers Taiwanese journalists