Post-Martial-Law Taiwanese Literature

30-second overview: On July 15, 1987, martial law ended after 38 years. Taiwanese literature immediately entered an explosive phase: from political fiction and women's writing to indigenous literature, forbidden topics were unshackled overnight. But the real paradox was this — at the very moment writers gained creative freedom, literature also began confronting the double edge of market forces. Commercial publishing brought more readers, yet also diluted literature's purity. This was Taiwan's most complex literary transition.

At midnight on July 15, 1987, Chiang Ching-kuo announced the lifting of martial law.¹ Peng Jui-jin, editor-in-chief of Literary World magazine, sat in his editorial office, a stack of banned political novels piled before him.² For 38 years, these works denouncing authoritarianism and interrogating history had waited in drawers. That night, these suppressed voices could finally see daylight.

But what Peng had not anticipated was that the real challenge had only just begun. Lifting martial law opened creative freedom — and brought with it unprecedented commercial competition. When political taboos vanished, literary works had to compete for readers' attention in an open market. Taiwan's most complex literary transition had begun.

Political Unshackling: The Eruption of Suppressed Voices

Literary Reckoning with the White Terror

The first wave of post-martial-law literature was a collective reckoning with the White Terror. Long-banned political topics suddenly gained space for expression, and writers seemed determined to say in one breath what had gone unsaid for forty years.

Lan Bo-zhou's documentary-literary work Song of the Wandering Wagon (1991) became the classic of this kind of writing. It chronicles the story of musician Lu Ho-jo and his comrades who were executed in the 1950s for left-wing political beliefs. Lan Bo-zhou spent five years interviewing survivors' families and examining archives, reconstructing a historical scene that had been deliberately erased.

One detail in the book leaves a lasting impression: Lu Ho-jo's widow, Chang Tsai-hsia, said that after her husband was taken away, even playing his compositions in the home became a "dangerous act." "We dared not weep, dared not speak — even missing him had to be done in secret." This sentence captures precisely the psychological devastation the White Terror wrought.

Before the lifting of martial law, such stories could not be published at all. After it, Song of the Wandering Wagon was a sensation in Taiwan, inspiring a wave of White Terror literary writing. Chen Ying-chen's Mountain Path (1983, reprinted after martial law), Yang Chao's Dark Alley, Dark Night (1990), and other works all excavated this buried history.

The Literary Return of February 28

The February 28 Incident — more sensitive even than the White Terror — also gradually entered the literary field of vision after martial law's end. Li Chiao's novel Buried Grievances 1947 (1995) takes the February 28 Incident as its backdrop, depicting the tragedy of a native Taiwanese family.

An even more significant breakthrough came through the stage. In 1989, Spring Wind, Transforming Rain, Taiwan's first stage production on the February 28 theme, was performed at the National Theater — and audience members wept aloud. Playwright Chen Yu-hui later recalled: "We had no idea how many people in the house that night were survivors from those days."

These works provided space for collective healing, making political literature an important channel for Taiwan's society to confront traumatic memory.

Bodily Liberation: Bold Writing on Gender and Desire

The Rise of Feminist Literature

Another major breakthrough brought by martial law's end was the unshackling of gender discourse. Li Ang had already challenged patriarchal taboos before the lifting of martial law with The Butcher's Wife (1983), but the feminist literary wave only reached full scale after martial law ended.

Liao Hui-ying's Rapeseed (1982) gained renewed attention after the lifting of martial law. This novel depicting the fate of traditional Taiwanese women resonated perfectly with the spirit of the women's consciousness movement that emerged in the post-martial-law era. The female protagonist Ah-hsiang's words — "I don't want to be rapeseed anymore" — became the inner voice of countless Taiwanese women.

Writers of the new generation were even more radical in their gender writing. Hu Shu-wen, Lo Yi-chun, and others who emerged in the 1990s made bold linguistic breakthroughs, directly depicting urban desire and loneliness — completely unimaginable before the lifting of martial law.

The Birth of Queer Literature

The most contested literary breakthrough after the lifting of martial law was the emergence of openly queer writing. Chu Tien-wen's Notes of a Desolate Man (1994), written from the perspective of a gay man depicting urban life in Taipei, won the inaugural China Times Literature Prize of One Million Dollars, shaking the literary world.³

The novel's protagonist is an aesthete intellectual who, in the 1990s under the shadow of AIDS, writes of gay desire, fear, and existential anxiety. Chu Tien-wen combined classical aesthetics with contemporary urban experience to create a narrative style at once exquisite and decadent,⁴ advancing Taiwanese literature's writing on desire into an entirely new dimension.

But this breakthrough came at a cost. Many conservative readers denounced the book as "morally corrupt," and some groups even called for a ban. Chu Tien-wen said in one interview, resigned: "Literary freedom, it turns out, requires bearing so much misunderstanding."

Linguistic Pluralism: The Revival of Mother-Tongue Literature

The Rebirth of Hokkien Literature

Before the lifting of martial law, creating in Hokkien was nearly impossible. Afterward, Hokkien literature — suppressed for decades — entered a revival.

Sung Tse-lai was a key figure in the Hokkien literary renaissance. His novel Da Niu Nan Village uses Hokkien Chinese characters, depicting the transformation of rural society. Sung Tse-lai wrote in Hokkien while simultaneously building the theoretical foundations of Hokkien literature, establishing academic standing for a long-marginalized genre.

Li Chiao approached from the perspective of Hakka literature. His Cold Night Trilogy, though written in Mandarin, preserves a strong sense of Hakka linguistic feeling and cultural content. He once said: "Language is not just a communication tool — it is the vessel of culture. We must tell our own stories in our own language."

The Awakening of Indigenous Literature

The most challenging linguistic experiments came from indigenous literature. After martial law's end, indigenous writers including Sun Ta-chuan, Walis Nokan, and Syaman Rapongan began using Mandarin to reinterpret their own cultural traditions.

Walis Nokan's poetry collection Atayal Re-Survey (1992) revisits Taiwan history through a Tayal worldview. He wrote: "My blood carries the sound of rivers" — a poetic mode of expression that gave Han Chinese readers their first sense of the distinctive indigenous aesthetic.

Syaman Rapongan's Myths of Badai Bay (1992) uses the Tao people's ocean worldview to rewrite his community's life history, shattering Han Chinese stereotypes of indigenous literature as "writing about suffering."

Indigenous writers faced a paradox: how to express non-Han thought within a Han-language framework? This question fermented throughout the 1990s and only gradually found diverse answers in the 21st century.

Urban Literature: A New Sensibility in a Consumer Society

The Impact of Postmodernism

From the late 1980s into the early 1990s, a flood of Western postmodern theory entered Taiwan, profoundly influencing younger literary creators.⁵ Chang Ta-chun, Lin Yao-te, Huang Fan, and other writers began experimenting with new forms of writing.

Chang Ta-chun's Four Delights, Worrying the Nation (1988) blended detective fiction, martial arts novels, and contemporary politics to create an entirely new narrative style. This "collage" technique was deeply influenced by postmodern aesthetics and also reflected the complexity of Taiwan's post-martial-law society.

Lin Yao-te went further, putting forward the concept of "urban literature," arguing that literature should respond to the new experiences brought by urbanization. His novel 1947 Takasago Lily captures the alienation of Taipei urban life through rapid-fire narration and fragmented imagery.

Literary Reflections on Consumer Culture

After the lifting of martial law, Taiwan rapidly entered a consumer society. Literary works began to reflect this new mode of life. Yuan Chiung-chiung's novels depict the emotional predicaments of the urban middle class; Su Wei-chen examines the question of women's identity in a consumer society.

The shared characteristic of these works is their focus on "small comforts" (xiao que xing) — grand historical narratives step aside as the minute sensations of personal life take center stage. This literary orientation reflects Taiwan's profound social shift from political primacy to individualism.

But this turn also provoked controversy. Some critics argued that urban literature was too mired in personal feeling and lacked concern for social reality. This divide remains an important topic in Taiwan's literary world today.

Market Publishing: The Double Edge of Literature

The Dual Impact of Commercial Mechanisms

After the lifting of martial law, Taiwan's publishing industry rapidly marketized. When press censorship was lifted on January 1, 1988, the number of newspapers exploded from 29 to hundreds, massively expanding newspaper supplement pages and providing far more outlets for literary publication.

Meanwhile, commercial publishers began competing for outstanding writers. China Times Publishing established the "China Times Literature Prize of One Million Dollars" in 1994; the large prize attracted a surge of writers. Chu Tien-wen's Notes of a Desolate Man was the inaugural winner.³

But commercialization also brought negative effects. Publishers, seeking to cater to the market, favored quickly-sellable popular works. Serious literary writers began feeling existential pressure. Chen Ying-chen once lamented: "Literature has become a commodity, writers have become producers. Is this progress or regression?"

The Establishment of Literary Award Institutions

To balance the relationship between commerce and art, various literary award institutions were established in succession after the lifting of martial law. The United Daily News Fiction Prize, the China Times Literary Prize, and the Taipei Literary Prize together supported the publication and adjudication mechanism for serious literature.

These awards established standards of literary value, and many writers who later became prominent were discovered through literary prizes.

But the awards system also generated new problems: writers began writing to win prizes, and literary creation showed a certain tendency toward "formulaic" writing. This is another paradox in Taiwan's literary development.

The Digital Eve: Media Transformation in the 1990s

In the mid-1990s, the internet began to take root in Taiwan, and BBS stations became an informal venue for literary publication. This immediately-responsive, interactive mode of writing posed an initial challenge to traditional newspaper supplement literature.

Literary magazines underwent transformation as well. Literary Taiwan, Taiwan Literature and Art, and other nativist literary magazines found more room to develop after the lifting of martial law; Wen Hsun magazine specialized in organizing literary news, providing selection indexes and author chronologies. By the late 1990s, some magazines faced distribution difficulties, and reader fragmentation was already beginning to brew.

The full unfolding of these transformations would have to wait until the early 21st century.

The Global Challenge: Taiwanese Literature's International Horizons

The Large-Scale Import of Translated Literature

After the lifting of martial law, a flood of foreign literature entered Taiwan. Japan's Haruki Murakami, Latin America's Gabriel García Márquez, Czech Milan Kundera, and other writers profoundly influenced the creative styles of Taiwan's younger writers.

This influence cut both ways: on one hand, it expanded Taiwanese writers' international vision; on the other, it risked diluting the distinctive character of local literature. Lo Yi-chun's work shows clear influence from Latin American magical realism, but he successfully localized the technique.

The Beginning of Taiwanese Literature's Translation Abroad

In the 1990s, Taiwanese literature also began moving out into the world. The government established the "Taiwan Literature Translation Program," promoting English translations of outstanding works. Pai Hsien-yung's Taipei People, Li Ang's The Butcher's Wife, and other works gradually appeared in English editions.

But the challenge of translation abroad lies in preserving a literary work's cultural character. The transition of Taiwanese literature from "following the West" to "dialoguing with the world" would not truly be complete until Wu Ming-yi appeared in the 21st century.

Controversy and Reflection

The Eternal Tension Between Commerce and Art

The deepest controversy in post-martial-law Taiwanese literature remains the relationship between commerce and art. Those who support marketization argue that commercial mechanisms expanded literature's social impact; critics maintain that excessive commercialization damaged literature's purity.

Yu Kwang-chung once said: "Literature is not a stock — its value cannot be measured in market prices." But Hou Wen-yung countered: "If there are no readers, what meaning does literature have?" This division continues to this day.

The Balance Between Nativism and Internationalism

Another ongoing controversy is the balance between nativism and internationalism. Extreme nativist advocates argued for writing entirely in Hokkien, criticizing Mandarin-language literature as "colonial literature"; internationalists argued that Mandarin is the bridge for Taiwanese literature to reach the world.

This controversy reflects the complexity of Taiwanese literature's identity. Is Taiwanese literature "Chinese-language literature in Taiwan" or "literature by and for Taiwanese people"? This question was debated throughout the 1990s and has no standard answer to this day.

Coda: The Literary Map toward the Millennium

From the lifting of martial law on July 15, 1987 to the millennial countdown of the late 1990s, those thirteen years were Taiwanese literature's most explosive period. Political literature reclaimed its voice; women's literature found its footing; indigenous literature reclaimed sovereignty over its own interpretation; urban literature and postmodern currents reshaped the possibilities of language itself.

But the contradictions martial law's end brought never dissolved with it. Market pressures, linguistic divisions, identity tensions — these are the deep questions that only genuinely surfaced in Taiwanese literature after the opening, not questions the pre-martial-law prohibition could contain.

After the millennium, the stage passed to a new generation of voices: Wu Ming-yi, Lin Yi-han, Kan Yao-ming. But the foundations laid in those thirteen years after the lifting of martial law were the prerequisite for everything that followed.

Further Reading

• Postwar Taiwanese Literature — The 42 years from 1945 to 1987: from aphasia and modernism through the nativist literary debate to women's awakening during martial law
• Contemporary Taiwanese Literature — The 21st century: Wu Ming-yi's internationalization, Lin Yi-han, and the next baton of digital literature
• History of Taiwanese Literature — The full arc from Dutch rule, Ming/Qing era, and Japanese colonial rule through postwar to the contemporary
• Lin Liang — Founder of the Republic of China Children's Literature Society in 1984 (after martial law), father of Taiwanese children's literature; his Picture Stories column accompanied generations of Taiwanese children

References