Chinese Literature - Li-hua Ying 2010

WANG ZHENHE, A.K.A. WANG CHEN-HO (1940—1990)
The Dictionary

WANG ZHENHE, A.K.A. WANG CHEN-HO (1940—1990). Fiction writer. Born and educated in Taiwan, Wang Zhenhe is considered a nativist writer whose concerns for the lives of ordinary, downtrodden people feature prominently in Taiwan’s realist tradition. He is also a superb satirist; humor runs through nearly all his works. “Jiazhuang yi niuche” (An Oxcart for Dowry) relates how a man gets an oxcart from a small garment merchant with whom his wife has been having an affair. All three characters live on the fringes of society, left behind by rapidly modernizing Taiwan. Wang depicts in a satirical language, but with great compassion, the tensions that exist in their everyday lives and their wretched conditions, including physical deformity as well as an apparent lack of morality. The comic voice is put to its full use in his novel Meigui meigui wo ai ni (Rose, Rose I Love You). Wang employs an alternately riotous, sardonic, and serious tone to address the issue of moral degradation in Taiwanese society. The novel sheds light on the exploitation of women in the prostitution industry boosted by the arrival of American G.I.s.