Yeh Shih-tao (; 1925 – 11 December 2008) was a pioneering Taiwanese writer and historian, who specialized in the literary history of Taiwan and the lives of ordinary

Taiwanese people Taiwanese people may be generally considered the people of Taiwan who share a common culture, ancestry and speak Taiwanese Mandarin, Hokkien, Hakka or indigenous Taiwanese languages as a mother tongue. Taiwanese people may also refer to the i ...

. He was considered a seminal figure in Taiwanese literary criticism. Yeh Shih-tao was born in

Tainan Tainan (), officially Tainan City, is a special municipality in southern Taiwan facing the Taiwan Strait on its western coast. Tainan is the oldest city on the island and also commonly known as the "Capital City" for its over 200 years of his ...

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 ...

, in 1925 at a time when Taiwan was under Japanese rule. His early writings were in Japanese, but he switched to Chinese after the Nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek gained control of Taiwan following the end of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

. He wrote three novels while attending high school, one of which, titled ''A Letter from Lin'' (林君來的信), was published in April 1943 as Yeh's debut work. He was arrested by the Chiang Kai-shek regime in 1951 and imprisoned for three years for allegedly harboring "communist agents." After his release from prison, Yeh became a schoolteacher. In 1965, Yen published ''Youth'' (青春), which he described as his first serious work since the war ended. Author of ''No Land, No Literature'' (沒有土地, 哪有文學), ''The Dilemmas of Taiwan Literature'' and ''History of Taiwanese Literature'' (台灣文學史綱), he chronicled 300 years of the island's literary history and gained renown "for his searing portrayals of ordinary Taiwanese". His best known work was likely ''The Chronicle of Taiwanese Literature,'' a compilation of Taiwanese historical literature published in 1987. Yeh later served as an adviser of the Teacher Human Rights Advocate Committee in Kaohsiung, and was appointed a national policy adviser to the

Chen Shui-bian Chen Shui-bian (; born 12 October 1950) is a retired Taiwanese politician and lawyer who served as the president of the Republic of China (Taiwan) from 2000 to 2008. Chen was the first president from the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) whic ...

government. Yeh Shih-tao died of intestinal cancer in Kaohsiung, on 11 December 2008, at the age of 83. He had been continuously hospitalized since February 2008. Yeh was survived by his wife and two sons. Yeh's works of fiction have been translated to a number of languages, among them English, Japanese, Korean, Malay, and Vietnamese. A documentary about the author, ''Yeh Shih-tao, A Taiwan Man'', was released in 2022.

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The Man Who Has Put the Signs on the Road:Yeh Shih-tao

Taking the nation's literature to the nation (Taipei Times)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Yeh, Shih-tao 1925 births 2008 deaths 20th-century Taiwanese historians Taiwanese male novelists Taiwanese people of Hoklo descent Historians of Taiwan Writers from Tainan 20th-century novelists Deaths from cancer in Taiwan Deaths from colorectal cancer 20th-century male writers Senior Advisors to President Chen Shui-bian Taiwanese prisoners and detainees Prisoners and detainees of Taiwan 20th-century Taiwanese writers Taiwanese schoolteachers Literary historians 20th-century Taiwanese educators

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