Lim Tsiong-bin: Author of "Don't Despise Taiwan" and a 9,000-Line Taiwanese-Language Epic

30-second overview: In 1987, at age 32, Lim Tsiong-bin wrote "Don't Despise Taiwan," a poem later set to music and performed widely. In 1991, Hsu Ching-chun won the Golden Melody Award for Best Taiwanese-Language Female Singer with this song; Lim Tsiong-bin, as lyricist, simultaneously won Best Dialect Song Lyricist but did not attend the ceremony. His Taiwanese-language epic Tears of Rouge contains 9,000 lines and 110,000 characters, making it the longest poem in Taiwan's literary history.

Keywords: Lim Tsiong-bin, Don't Despise Taiwan, Tears of Rouge, Taiwanese-language literature, Sweet Potato Poetry Society

1987: At 32, He Wrote That Poem

In 1987, at age 32, Lim Tsiong-bin wrote "Don't Despise Taiwan." A 2019 Public Television report documented a phenomenon he observed at the time, and he described it this way: "Taiwanese people at that time had a widespread problem—they lacked confidence in themselves and did not have deep affection for Taiwan. This phenomenon should not exist."¹

After the poem was published, it was set to music. The Public Television report described it as "frequently performed by orchestras and singers, moving many people," and it continued to be performed at the 2016 National Day ceremony.¹ The same interviewee framed this on camera as a responsibility: "Taiwanese people should, no matter what Taiwan is like, if Taiwan is truly not good, we should work to improve it and make it better. If it is good, we should continue to promote it and keep it even better. This is the responsibility that a Taiwanese person should have toward this land."¹

A work written at 32 has been performed and sung for far longer than the decades since its creation. The other end of this thread is his decision to shift from Chinese to Taiwanese.

The Two Golden Melody Awards in 1991: He Accepted Only One

The 1991 Golden Melody Awards brought this poem to a larger stage. That year, Hsu Ching-chun won Best Taiwanese-Language Female Singer with "Don't Despise Taiwan," and the lyricist Lim Tsiong-bin simultaneously won Best Dialect Song Lyricist.¹² He did not attend the ceremony to accept.

In 2019, recalling that night, his tone did not sound like he was speaking of something he regretted: "She won Female Singer of the Year, and I won the Golden Melody Award for Best Lyricist that year, but I didn't go to accept it. The award's significance is personal, but I felt the nation was more important, this land was more important."²

Wikipedia's entry places his creative turning point in the same period: he originally wrote in Chinese, but began creating in Taiwanese-language literature in 1983. In 1987, he co-founded Taiwan New Culture with Sung Tse-lai, Lin Shuang-pu, Lin Wen-chin, Li Chiao, Hsieh Chang-ting, Wang Shih-hsun, Chung Yi-jen, and others, promoting Taiwan's indigenous culture.³ This was the same year "Don't Despise Taiwan" was born.

Tears of Rouge: 9,000 Lines

His most time-intensive work was not that short poem. The Public Television report stated it directly: Lim Tsiong-bin's Taiwanese-language poem Tears of Rouge contains 9,000 lines and 110,000 characters, making it the longest poem in Taiwan's literary history.² The report also mentioned that he and like-minded colleagues founded the Taiwan Literature Front magazine, promoting Taiwanese-language literature and hoping the language would be passed down through generations.²

Wikipedia's entry positions this work even further, recording it as "the first epic in Taiwanese-language literature and the longest poem in Taiwan's literary history to date," and notes that it was published by Tainan's Zhenping Publishing House in 2002. The same entry also mentions that his novel The Bodhi Lovesickness Sutra was selected for the Top 101 Post-War Taiwan Novels, and both Tears of Rouge and The Bodhi Lovesickness Sutra are listed in the entry as classics of Taiwanese-language literature.³

Placing the two sources together, the scale of this work is clear: measured by line count and character count, it has no peer in Taiwan's literary history. It did not appear in book form until 2002, nearly twenty years after he began writing in Taiwanese in 1983.²³

The Sweet Potato Poetry Society: Taiwan's First Organization Dedicated to Mother-Tongue Writing

Beyond writing, his role in the movement is more frequently cited. Wikipedia records that in 1991, he co-founded the "Sweet Potato Poetry Society" with Lin Tsung-yuan, Huang Chin-lien, Li Chin-an, and Chen Ming-jen—Taiwan's first organization dedicated to mother-tongue writing. In 1995, he served as founding chair of the Taiwan Taiwanese-Language Promotion Association and published Castor Tree Taiwanese Monthly, advancing mother-tongue education and advocating for the elevation of Taiwanese's status.³

The same entry also records his role in literary debates: during the Taiwanese-language literature debates of 1989 and 1991, he both participated in written polemics and was one of those who ignited the debate. The entry positions him as "a constructor of Taiwanese-language literary theory" and calls him the first poet in the postwar period to bring Taiwanese prose into the realm of pure literature.³ These are the entry's records, cited here as given; readers can verify further through other scholarly literature.

He was born on December 19, 1955, in Taibao City, Chiayi County. He attended Provincial Chiayi Teachers College and Fu Jen Catholic University's Department of Chinese Literature. After graduation, he taught at an elementary school and served as a part-time lecturer in the Department of Chinese at Providence University. In addition to poetry, he has written essays, fiction, drama, and criticism; he compiled the Concise Taiwanese Dictionary and edited collections including Sixty Years of Taiwanese Poetry.³

Why This Page Deserves a Place Here

Taiwanese-language literature is the latest branch to claim a place in Taiwan's literary history. The names written into that history before it mostly first passed through the gates of Chinese or Japanese language; writing in one's mother tongue had to wait until language policy loosened before slowly gaining its own position and theory. Along this line, Hsiang Yang sent Taiwanese-language poetry to the Bamboo Hat poetry journal in 1976, and Lim Tsiong-bin added the organization and theory of the movement after the 1980s. Both already have the Bamboo Hat Poetry Society and Tshik Tshoo-bun available for further reading.³

Further reading:

• Taiwan's Literary History — The place of mother-tongue literature in Taiwan's entire literary history
• Bamboo Hat Poetry Society — The evening in 1976 when Hsiang Yang published Taiwanese-language poetry in Bamboo Hat, another camp bringing the indigenous into poetry
• Tshik Tshoo-bun — Taiwanese writing systems and language rights on the contemporary front line

References