Huang Chun-ming (; born 13 February 1935) is a Taiwanese literary figure and teacher. Huang writes mainly about the tragic and sometimes humorous lives of ordinary Taiwanese people, and many of his short stories have been turned into films, including ''The Sandwich Man'' (1983).

Career

Born in Ratō Town,

Taihoku Prefecture Taihoku Prefecture (台北州; ''Taihoku-shū'') was an administrative division of Taiwan created in 1920, during Japanese rule. The prefecture consisted of modern-day Keelung, New Taipei City, Taipei and Yilan County. Its government office, ...

Japanese Taiwan The island of Taiwan, together with the Penghu Islands, became a dependency of Japan in 1895, when the Qing dynasty ceded Fujian-Taiwan Province in the Treaty of Shimonoseki after the Japanese victory in the First Sino-Japanese War. The shor ...

(modern-day

Luodong Luodong Township () is an urban township in the central part of Yilan County, Taiwan. Luodong is the smallest township in the county. Naming Its name and former name () derive from the Kavalan word '' rutung'', meaning " monkey", referring to a ...

Yilan Yilan may refer to: China * Yilan County, Heilongjiang (依兰县), county of central Heilongjiang province, People's Republic of China * Yilan Town, Heilongjiang (依兰镇), seat of Yilan County * Yilan, Jilin (依兰镇), town in Yanji Taiwan ...

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 ...

), Huang began his higher education career at a college in

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 ...

but, after a series of transfers, ended up graduating from

National Pingtung University of Education National Pingtung University of Education (NPUE; ) was an institution of higher learning in Pingtung City, Pingtung County, Taiwan. It has now become part of National Pingtung University. Academics There were 14 departments at the univers ...

in southern Taiwan. He is a writer of broad interests and remarkable versatility, but he is first of all a

short story A short story is a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the oldest ...

writer. During the 1960s as a major contributor to the influential ''Literature Quarterly'', Huang was hailed as a representative of the Taiwan Nativist Literature movement that focused on the lives of rural

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 ...

. In more recent works he has turned his attention to urban culture and life in Taiwan's growing cities. Starting in the 1990s, he established and has written for and directed the Big Fish Children's Theater Troupe (黃大魚兒童劇團). Huang was awarded the for Literature in 1997. He opened a cafe and salon in his native Yilan, operating it for three years before closing it in December 2015.

Influences

Huang has said that in his early years he had limited access to literature in Chinese and that significant influences were

Ernest Hemingway Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and journalist. His economical and understated style—which he termed the iceberg theory—had a strong influence on 20th-century f ...

's ''

The Old Man and the Sea ''The Old Man and the Sea'' is a novella written by the American author Ernest Hemingway in 1951 in Cayo Blanco (Cuba), and published in 1952. It was the last major work of fiction written by Hemingway that was published during his lifetime. O ...

'' and "The Killers"; Mark Twain's ''

Tom Sawyer Thomas Sawyer () is the titular character of the Mark Twain novel ''The Adventures of Tom Sawyer'' (1876). He appears in three other novels by Twain: '' Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'' (1884), '' Tom Sawyer Abroad'' (1894), and '' Tom Sawyer, ...

'', ''

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn ''Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'' or as it is known in more recent editions, ''The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'', is a novel by American author Mark Twain, which was first published in the United Kingdom in December 1884 and in the United S ...

'', and "

The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" is an 1865 short story by Mark Twain. It was his first great success as a writer and brought him national attention. The story has also been published as "Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog" (its orig ...

William Faulkner William Cuthbert Faulkner (; September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was an American writer known for his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, based on Lafayette County, Mississippi, where Faulkner spent most o ...

's "A Rose for Emily," "The Bear," ''The Wild Palms'', and other American literature. Two other important influences were an anthology of short stories by

Shen Congwen Shen Congwen (28 December 1902 – 10 May 1988), formerly romanized as Shen Ts'ung-wen, was a Chinese writer who is considered one of the greatest modern Chinese writers, on par with Lu Xun. Regional culture and identity plays a much bigger rol ...

and a Chinese translation of stories by Anton Chekhov.Author's preface to the collection of English language translations of stories, ''The Taste of Apples'', pp. xiv-xv.

English translations

The major translation of Huang's work into English is '' The Taste of Apples'' (

Howard Goldblatt Howard Goldblatt (, born 1939) is a literary translator of numerous works of contemporary Chinese (mainland China & Taiwan) fiction, including '' The Taste of Apples'' by Huang Chunming and '' The Execution of Mayor Yin'' by Chen Ruoxi. Goldblatt ...

trans). New York: Columbia University Press, 2001. (''The Taste of Apples'' was previously published in a slightly different form as ''The Drowning of an Old Cat and Other Stories'', (Howard Goldblatt trans.). Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980.) Alternate translations of individual stories in the ''Taste of Apples'' collection are shown in the associated article. Other English language translations of Huang's work (found at http://mclc.osu.edu/rc/bib.htm): "Ah-Ban and the Cop." Tr. Howard Goldblatt. The Chinese Pen (Summer, 1981): 94-98. "Father's Writings Have Been Republished, Or, The Sexuality of Women Students in a Taipei Bookstore." Tr. Raymond N. Tang. In Helmut Martin, ed., Modern Chinese Writers: Self-portrayals. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1992, 204-208. "A Flower in the Rainy Night." Tr. Earl Wieman. In Joseph S.M. Lau, ed., Chinese Stories From Taiwan: 1960-1970. NY: Columbia UP, 1976, 195-241. "Hung T'ung, the Mad Artist." Tr. Jack Langlois. In Wai-lim Yip, ed., Chinese Arts and Literature: A Survey of Recent Trends. Occasional Papers/Reprint Series in Contemporary Asian Studies. Baltimore, 1977, 117-26. "I Love Mary." Tr. Howard Goldblatt. In Joseph S.M. Lau, ed., The Unbroken Chain: An Anthology of Taiwan Fiction Since 1926. Bloomington: IUP, 1983, 133-74. "Waiting for a Flower's Name" engdai yiduo hua de mingzi Tr. David Pollard. In Pollard, ed., The Chinese Essay. NY: Columbia UP, 2000, 345-49. "We Cant' Bring Back the Past" angshi zhi neng huimei Tr. David Pollard. In Pollard, ed., The Chinese Essay. NY: Columbia UP, 2000, 340-45. "Young Widow." In Rosemary Haddon, tr./ed, Oxcart: Nativist Stories from Taiwan, 1934-1977. Dortmund: Projekt Verlag, 1996, 221-304.

Notes

Portrait

Huang Chunming. A Portrait by Kong Kai Ming
at Portrait Gallery of Chinese Writers (Hong Kong Baptist University Library).

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Huang, Chunming Taiwanese male novelists 1935 births Living people Taiwanese Buddhists People from Luodong, Yilan County, Taiwan National Pingtung University of Education alumni 20th-century Taiwanese short story writers Taiwanese male short story writers 20th-century male writers