Zhong Lihe: Meinong 1915, the Writer Who Fell in a Pool of Blood

30-second overview: Zhong Lihe was born on December 15, 1915, into a Hakka family in Meinong, Kaohsiung.¹ He went to Northeast China in 1938 to make a living and returned to Taiwan in 1946.¹ His representative works include Lishan Farm (novel), The Native (short story, written in 1959), and A Couple in Poverty.¹ He is known as "the writer who fell in a pool of blood" and is often called the "Father of Taiwanese Nativist Literature" (a title that is disputed; Lai He is widely recognized as the father of modern Taiwanese literature).² On August 4, 1960, he died of hemoptysis while revising a manuscript, at the age of 44.¹

Hakka Roots in Meinong, Kaohsiung

Zhong Lihe was born on December 15, 1915, into a Hakka farming family in Meinong, Kaohsiung, under the given name Zhong Lianhe.¹ Meinong preserves a rich Hakka culture, and its landscape and language became the primary material for his later writing.

After graduating from Meinong Public School, he was admitted to Tainan Normal School but was unable to complete his studies due to family financial difficulties and returned home to farm. He labored during the day and read voraciously at night—works by modern writers such as Lu Xun, Mao Dun, and Lao She.

This self-directed literary training shaped the foundation of his writing: he lacked the structural awareness of a formally trained writer, but he possessed a sensibility honed through lived experience. The traces of Hakka syntax and the rhythms of rural labor in his prose were never smoothed over by the anxiety of "learning to write properly." Instead, they became his most distinctive linguistic fingerprint.

To Northeast China in 1938, Back to Taiwan in 1946

In 1938, at the age of 23, Zhong Lihe went to Northeast China (Dalian, Shenyang, Beijing) to make a living, and was only able to return home after the war in 1946.¹ Eight years of displacement gave him a deeper understanding of what "native land" meant, and this experience later became the source material for many of his short stories.

During those eight years in Northeast China, Zhong Lihe lived as a Taiwanese on the soil of the so-called "motherland," only to discover that he was neither regarded as Chinese nor able to return to Taiwan. This experience of double marginalization gave him a visceral, embodied understanding of the question of belonging, which later transformed into his persistent interrogation of the concept of "native land."

Lishan Farm: A True Portrait of Rural Taiwan

Lishan Farm is Zhong Lihe's most important novel.¹ Set in a Hakka farming village, it depicts the struggle of peasants surviving on barren land. Zhong himself came from a farming family and had firsthand experience of rural poverty. His portrayals of peasants are not idealized, and the work is considered an important precursor to Taiwanese nativist literature.

The significance of Lishan Farm in the history of Taiwanese literature lies not only in its early date but in the fact that its rural writing is free from the outside gaze of urban intellectuals. He was not someone who "went to the countryside to look around" and then wrote for urban readers—he grew from that land, and what he wrote was his own reality. This internal perspective later influenced the scope of Taiwanese nativist writing.

The Native: A Short Story Written in 1959

The Native is a short story Zhong Lihe wrote based on his own experience of displacement.¹ Written in 1959, it is one of the most important works from the final stage of his life. In the story, "native land" refers to a spiritual home; the place called Meinong is only the starting point.

As a spiritual concept, "native land" in Zhong Lihe's writing carries a unique dialectic: he spent eight years in "China" yet felt no sense of belonging, and only after returning to Meinong did he realize that the true native land is an emotional attachment to the soil and its language, not a geographic location. This reverse discovery gives his concept of "native land" a unique philosophical depth in Taiwanese literature.

Zhong Lihe revised manuscripts from his sickbed. There is a famous account that he said, "I want to finish writing my life before I die" (this quote has not yet been confirmed as originating from a primary source).³

Regardless of the exact provenance of this statement, it accurately describes a reality: in the last years of his life, his body was already severely ravaged by tuberculosis, yet he continued to write and revise. Writing was his race against time. In the final years of his life, as tuberculosis consumed his body, he kept writing and revising. This attitude became the primary reason later generations held him in such high regard.

Age 44, Fallen Over His Manuscript

On August 4, 1960, Zhong Lihe suddenly coughed up blood while revising a manuscript. He was taken to the hospital but could not be saved. He was 44 years old.¹

(Note: Some articles begin by saying "his brief 45-year life," which is contradictory. From December 1915 to August 1960 is in fact less than 45 years; the correct age is 44.)

He came to be known as "the writer who fell in a pool of blood."¹

This epithet endures because it describes simultaneously the manner of his death and the attitude of his life: in his final moments, he chose to continue doing what he believed was most important. This attitude itself became the spiritual core that anyone discussing Zhong Lihe must address.

Title Clarification: Father of Nativist Literature (Not Father of Taiwanese Literature)

Zhong Lihe is often called the "Father of Taiwanese Nativist Literature," but the title "Father of Taiwanese Literature" or "Father of Modern Taiwanese Literature" typically refers to Lai He (1894–1943)—they are two distinct titles.²

In 1976, the Zhong Lihe Cultural and Educational Foundation was established. It holds the annual Zhong Lihe Literary Award to discover new literary talent.

That a literary award was founded in the name of a writer who died in 1960 and has continued into the 21st century demonstrates that Zhong Lihe's literary spirit carries enduring symbolic power within the tradition of Taiwanese nativist literature. His name has become a vessel for a certain standard: attention to the land, truthful writing, refusal to conform to mainstream conventions.

Common narrative → More precise reading: Zhong Lihe is often described through a "tragic" lens—poverty and illness intertwined, dying at 44, falling in a pool of blood. But this framing can obscure the power of his work itself. His literature was never a monument frozen in suffering; it was the honest record of a writer with a clear sense of purpose documenting the reality of Hakka rural life. Tragedy was his circumstance, not his literature.

🎙️ Curator's note: If Zhong Lihe's 44-year life is reduced to the image of "the writer who fell in a pool of blood," we lose the most important thing about him as a writer: how clear-eyed his observational perspective was, how honest his language was, and what specific literary foundations his work contributed to the establishment of Taiwanese nativist literature.

He and Lai He represent two different origins of Taiwanese literature: Lai He's anti-Japanese spirit was political, while Zhong Lihe's rural writing was social. The two lines converged during the Nativist Literature Debate of the 1970s, but by then he was already gone. His name was cited as the source of that tradition—this is the position later generations have given him.

A 44-year life that left behind only a handful of books, yet those handful of books established a standard: nativist literature was never a romantic nostalgia for a rural past, but an honest record of real life. This standard is confirmed every time later generations invoke his name.

From a Hakka farming home in Meinong, to the drift of Northeast China, to the soil of Meinong, to revising a manuscript in a pool of blood—Zhong Lihe's life is an extreme case study of "how literature can be equivalent to life itself": he traded the last of his physical strength for the completion of his work.

Further reading: Zhong Lihe — Wikipedia ｜ Zhong Lihe Cultural and Educational Foundation ｜ Kaohsiung Meinong Zhong Lihe Memorial Hall

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