Lin Liang: Shallow, Yes — But Shallow with Flavor

30-second overview:
In the summer of 1944 in Zhangzhou, on the banks of the Jiulong River, 21-year-old Lin Liang lost his father. The family was left without its pillar. As the eldest son, he was expected to take over supporting the household — but his mother and younger brother made space for him to keep writing. Two years later, at 22, he arrived in Keelung harbor clutching a box of books, was assigned to the "Taiwan Provincial Mandarin Promotion Committee Research Division" to conduct comparative studies of Amoy dialect and Southern Min, and in 1948 moved to the newly launched Mandarin Daily News as children's section editor. From there, he wrote for 73 years — until the week before he died at 95, quietly in his sleep, when the final poem of his Mandarin Daily News "Look at a Picture, Tell a Story" column had just been published. His core belief was what he called "the art of simple language" (淺語的藝術): words that can be understood at a glance, yet shallow with flavor; things a child can follow, yet the same literary nourishment adults receive.

The Eldest Son at the Jiulong River

In the summer of 1944, the city of Zhangzhou, Fujian. The 21-year-old Lin Liang stood for a long time on the banks of the Jiulong River.

The Second Sino-Japanese War had entered its seventh year. The Lin family had fled from Gulangyu all the way to Zhangzhou — this was their third year there. His father, Lin Mu-ren, dove into the river that day to save a drowning young man and never came back up¹.

The family had lost its foundation. Lin Liang, as the eldest son — with two younger brothers and a younger sister beneath him — was supposed to take on the weight of supporting them². He struggled for a long time between "the household" and "the dream of writing," until his mother, Wu Bao-chai, sat him down, and his second brother said: you write your things — I'll handle the household.

"For the sake of writing, I once gave things up."

This line, repeated in interviews across many years³, speaks of a young man whose second brother had stepped aside to let him keep the eldest son's position — in a different sense. All the warm essays he wrote for the rest of his life, all the children's poems, the four-person household in Little Sun, the white Spitz, the lamp glowing in the window — behind them there was always a father who never came back to shore, and a brother who carried the household in his place.

In 1944, he had not yet written a single word for children.

📝 Curator's Note: The "shallowness" in Lin Liang's work carries weight. A man who lost his father at 21 went on to write about family, about father-daughter relationships, about brothers. Those writings look innocent and warm on the surface — but beneath them runs a fear of what it means for a child to lose their childhood, and a lifelong effort to fill that absence back in, one word at a time.

A Box of Books Off the Boat

In February 1946, the 22-year-old Lin Liang stepped off a ship from Xiamen at Keelung harbor, clutching a box of books⁴.

He had passed an exam hosted by the Ministry of Education in Xiamen for the position of "Mandarin Promoter." Why Xiamen? Because the Amoy dialect is closely related to the Taiwanese variety of Southern Min. After the Nationalist government took control of Taiwan, it needed to implement a Mandarin promotion campaign, and the people best suited to the job were those who could bridge Southern Min and Mandarin — recruiting from Xiamen was more efficient than dispatching from Beijing⁵.

He was assigned to the "Taiwan Provincial Mandarin Promotion Committee Research Division," chaired by Wei Jian-gong from Peking University, with Ho Jung as deputy; the committee was formally established April 2, 1946⁶. Lin Liang's work in the research division was comparative studies of Mandarin and Southern Min — a technical translator's position, not the role of enforcing suppression of Taiwanese. In interviews he would later rarely mention this political context; his focus was always on the track that came next: 1948.

On October 25, 1948 — the day commemorating Taiwan's restoration — the Mandarin Daily News was founded in Taipei. Lin Liang transferred from the committee to the newspaper as children's section editor⁷. From that moment, for the first time in his life, the position he had been placed in was: "the person who writes things for children."

He was 24 years old. Four years had passed since the Jiulong River.

"Shallow, Yes — But Shallow with Flavor"

In 1976, Lin Liang's collected essays The Art of Simple Language (淺語的藝術) were published in book form by the Mandarin Daily News Press — 28 essays in total⁸. But some of the content in that book dated back to the 1950s, when he first started writing as editor of the Mandarin Daily News children's section — meaning he was already practicing this concept from the age of 25 at the editorial desk.

His own definition, verbatim from a 2013 PTS interview:

"What is 'simple language'? The words have to be readable — you look at them and you understand them. That's what I mean by shallow language. Shallow, yes — but shallow with flavor."⁹

This phrase is almost impossible to translate directly into English. "Shallow with flavor" (淺而有味) is a Chinese figure of speech: simple on the surface, but with depth when you read into it — not hollow.

An even deeper line appears in the preface to The Art of Simple Language¹⁰:

"Adults receiving literary nourishment is regarded as a matter of course, a right they are entitled to. Children should enjoy exactly the same."

This went beyond the practical guidelines of an editor. It was an explicit political position. In 1950s Taiwan, "writing for children" had almost no professional recognition: it was accepted that adults would write things children couldn't understand, and equally accepted that children's material would be simplified, didactic, or serve as a vehicle for state directives. At his editorial desk, Lin Liang redrew that line: children deserve to be treated as complete readers.

📝 Curator's Note: Lin Liang's core circle in the contemporary Taiwanese children's literature world included Lin Hai-yin (Pure Literature Press), Ho Fan, and Hong Yan-qiu. The Little Sun he wrote in 1972 was published by Lin Hai-yin's Pure Literature Press¹¹. These postwar cultural figures who had crossed the strait and settled in Taiwan — each in their own way — built an ecosystem in which "writing for children could be serious work." Lin Liang was the one who walked furthest down that path.

Writing _Little Sun_ in the Small Hours

Between 1971 and 1972, Lin Liang ran a series of essays in the family section of the Mandarin Daily News under the column "Tea Talk"¹². In 1972, Pure Literature Press published them as a book: Little Sun¹³.

By the time of his death in 2019, the book had been reprinted more than 130 times. Many Taiwanese families assumed it was a fictional heartwarming story, but every piece was something that had actually happened in his living room¹⁴.

The four protagonists: himself (Dad), his wife Cheng Hsiu-chih (Mom), and three daughters — Lin Ying (Ying-ying, eldest), Lin Chi (Chi-chi, second), and Lin Wei (Wei-wei, youngest). A supporting cast that included a white Spitz named Snow (斯諾)¹⁵.

But Lin Liang's own most authoritative account of his creative motivation appears across many repeated self-descriptions:

"Because of how busy work was, I rarely had the chance to sit down with the children and talk properly — so I wrote Little Sun late at night. It was a man 'sitting at home and missing home' — a father's guilt toward his children."¹⁶

This matters. "Sitting at home and missing home" — he was physically in the house, but too busy at the newspaper during the day to be with his three daughters, so he wrote about them at night, which meant "missing" this home while inside it. The easy, humorous domesticity in the book is underlaid by a father's guilt at not being able to accompany his children.

The most famous line in the book¹⁷:

"We once desperately longed for the sun — but now we've forgotten the world outside the window, because we have our very own little sun."

This is the most poem-like, and the most confessional, sentence in Lin Liang's writing.

Six O'Clock Every Morning, Five Columns a Week

At 91 years old (2016), Lin Liang gave CommonHealth magazine an interview and mentioned that he was writing five columns a week¹⁸.

"Every morning from 6 to 9, I concentrate and write."

"If I compare this year's me with next year's me, this year's me is still the young one!"¹⁹

Those five columns included:

• Mandarin Daily News children's section "Look at a Picture, Tell a Story" (starting 1951, multiple short poems or essays per week)
• Mandarin Daily News family section "Night Window Jottings" (successor to "Tea Talk" after it ended in 1991)
• Contributions to children's magazines and literary supplements

The most significant was the "Look at a Picture, Tell a Story" track. This column launched in 1951, and he wrote it for nearly 6,000 installments²⁰. From age 27 to age 95, spanning postwar Taiwan through the twenty-first century.

For children growing up in Taiwan from the 1950s through the 1990s, the odds were very high that any given poem or short piece they encountered in Mandarin Daily News was written by Lin Liang. This material scale — one person, multiple pieces per week, uninterrupted for 68 years — has no parallel in the history of Mandarin-language children's literature.

"Every time I pick up my pen, I feel like I'm telling a story to a group of little friends from the past."²¹

He said this when accepting the 16th National Cultural and Arts Award in 2012. "A group of little friends from the past" — which group? He never specified. But for a man who had been writing for 60 years, the small readers in his mind were probably the first children to read the Mandarin Daily News in the 1950s — who are now in their seventies and eighties.

6,000 Installments of "Look at a Picture, Tell a Story"

The material scale of this column deserves its own section.

Format: each installment paired an illustration with a short children's poem or brief prose piece — long enough for a third- or fourth-grader to finish in three minutes. It ran from 1951, when Lin Liang was 27, until the week before his death on December 23, 2019, when the final piece he had proofread — a poem called "Little Crow Spends Winter" — was published on December 16²².

68 years. Multiple pieces per week. Approximately 6,000 installments.

But what made this column a genuine infrastructure for children's literature was something beyond the numbers. All 6,000 installments held to the same standard: the art of simple language — accessible to children, but with flavor; no didacticism, but with a stance; light, but not empty.

It defined what "the literature children read every day" should look like in postwar Taiwan.

📝 Curator's Note: The infrastructure of children's literature at the Mandarin Daily News ran along several axes: beyond the "Look at a Picture, Tell a Story" column, there was also the founding of the Children's Literature Weekly, the establishment of the Shepherd Flute Award²⁴, and the development of the Art of Simple Language theoretical framework. Lin Liang spent 57 years at the newspaper (1948–2005, rising from children's section editor to chief editor to publishing director to president and board chair²³), and what he did was the work of institutionalizing "writing for children." On December 23, 1984, he served as the founding president of the Republic of China Children's Literature Society, which was established in Taipei²⁵. From that moment, "children's literature writer" in Taiwan began to have professional identity.

The Daughter Who Transcribed His Final Three Months

In 2015, at age 92, Lin Liang collapsed and was hospitalized. Doctors found he had previously suffered an undetected stroke and had been recovering through the sheer force of making himself write every day²⁶.

In his final three months, his strength was declining and he could no longer hold a pen. The column shifted to a new process: he would dictate, his daughter Lin Wei would transcribe, she would read it back to him for confirmation, then it would go to layout²⁷.

On December 23, 2019 — the day of his passing — Lin Wei gave an interview to the Central News Agency²⁸:

"Father kept writing despite everything — no pain, no suffering, a peaceful departure. His final 'Look at a Picture, Tell a Story' column will run in Mandarin Daily News next Monday."

"(What I admire most is his incredible tenacity.) Even after the minor stroke four years ago left him unable to write long pieces, he persisted in writing short ones. His willpower is astonishing."

Lin Wei herself is a children's literature worker who later became chief editor of the Mandarin Daily News²⁹. In 2014 she published Forever Little Sun: Lin Liang, a record of conversations between father and daughter³⁰ — and in his final three months, that father-daughter pair became the final creative workflow: dictate — transcribe — confirm.

In an Openbook interview she said quietly³¹:

"These are all the 'savings' my father deposited in me back then. I think this is also why he can now 'withdraw' such good care."

"Savings" — all the time and emotional investment Lin Liang put into family and children across years of writing Little Sun, Dad's Sixteen Letters, and thousands of "Look at a Picture" installments. "Withdraw" — at 95, during his final three months of being bedridden, that youngest daughter — the "Ying-ying, Chi-chi, Wei-wei" Wei-wei — converting those savings into the labor of transcription and the care of a body.

The family's economy of sentences, stated more directly than any essay.

Confidant to the Young

In November 2018, the 95-year-old Lin Liang arrived in a wheelchair, accompanied by his daughter Lin Wei, to receive an award at the Openbook Best Children's Book ceremony. The winning title: Snail: 78 Poems by Lin Liang³².

He became the oldest recipient of a children's book award in Taiwanese literary history. The shortest poem in the entire collection used only 12 different Chinese characters. A man who had been writing for 60 years spent his whole life arriving at the thing called "12 characters."

In October 2019, the last book he personally proofread before his death was Happy Youth: Grandpa Lin Liang's Treasury of Wisdom³³. In the preface, he wrote lines that became the most quoted in his obituary coverage:

"I hope through this book to forge a bond with young readers — to have a conversation with them through words, to become a confidant to them."³⁴

"To become a confidant to them" — a 95-year-old grandfather saying this to children is the same thing as a 25-year-old editor in the 1950s writing "adults receiving literary nourishment is a right, and children should enjoy exactly the same."

Seventy years later, he was no longer speaking of children's "right" — he was saying he wanted to "become a confidant." The position had shifted into relationship. The principle had become a request.

Closing: The Desk Lamp Still On

On the morning of December 23, 2019, at 7 a.m., Lin Wei went into her father's room as she did every morning, to turn him and relax his muscles. She found he had passed away peacefully³⁵.

"This morning I went in as usual to turn him and relax his muscles, and found that Father had passed away peacefully. We're grateful for the concern and condolences from all sides."

On the desk sat the proofread manuscript from the week before — the "Look at a Picture, Tell a Story" column scheduled to run the following Monday. A week earlier, on December 16, his final children's poem "Little Crow Spends Winter" had been published in the Mandarin Daily News. From the first "Look at a Picture, Tell a Story" piece in 1951 to the final little crow in 2019, this column had continued for 68 years.

He was 96 by traditional Chinese reckoning, 95 by Western count³⁶.

From 1944, when he lost his father on the banks of the Jiulong River, to that December 23 morning, he spent 75 years answering the question posed to the 21-year-old eldest son who stood at the water's edge: you write your things — he did.

He wrote until the last week. He wrote until his youngest daughter came back and withdrew the savings he had deposited in her. He wrote his way to the longest-running column and oldest award recipient in the history of Mandarin-language children's literature. He wrote until his own definition of "simple language" — "shallow, yes, but shallow with flavor" — became the baseline for how entire postwar generations of Taiwanese children were first treated as complete readers.

📝 Curator's Note: The 2012 National Cultural and Arts Award (16th edition) citation said it precisely³⁷: "Sustained creative work for 60 years, with outstanding and cumulative achievement; pioneering and original contributions to children's literature. Language that is free and lively, weaving texts with a distinctive aesthetic of simplicity, shaping an artistic style that is harmonious and warm." This reads as though it was written for Lin Liang, and also as though it was written for the entire period when postwar Taiwanese children's literature went from nothing to something.

🧬 This article was EVOLVEd from idlccp's March 27, 2026 initial draft, rewritten with full Stage 1 research (22 WebSearch + 11 WebFetch, research report). The Jiulong River scene, "art of simple language" verbatim quotations, the daughter-transcription scene, and the final posthumous poem "Little Crow Spends Winter" were all newly added from this research.

Further Reading:

• Postwar Taiwan Literature — the broader historical context of Lin Liang's generation: mainlanders who crossed the strait and began writing for children on this island
• Post-Martial Law Taiwan Literature — Lin Liang witnessed and participated in the transition of children's literature from the margins to the mainstream during this period
• Japanese Colonial Period Literature — the Taiwanese literary context before Lin Liang arrived; understanding the historical counterpoint to his position as "Mandarin Promoter"
• Taiwan Literary History — children's literature as a branch of postwar Taiwanese literature; Lin Liang as its founding figure

References