History of Tongzhi Literature: A Taiwanese Invention

　　"Tongzhi literature" is "literature that allows readers to feel people, events, and things."
　　"The history of Tongzhi literature" is "a public history based on Tongzhi literature."
　　Public history is an alternative memory that differs from mainstream historical perspectives.

　　Chi Ta-wei's treatise, "The History of Tongzhi Literature: An Invention of Taiwan," meticulously traces six decades of Taiwan's public history, from the 1950s dominated by the American-led Cold War to the early 21st century "post-Cold War" era, encompassing various types of Taiwanese Tongzhi literary works, including novels (long, medium, and short), essays, poetry, and drama.

　　"The History of Tongzhi Literature" is a cultural history treatise that offers an alternative to mainstream history, frequently asking:
　　How did the 1950s, even before Pai Hsien-yung entered the Taiwanese literary scene, create an "imagined community" that "recognized" homosexuality?
　　As Pai Hsien-yung flourished in the 1960s, how did his literary predecessors and peers depict the subjective effects of other Tongzhi individuals in their works?
　　In Taiwanese literature of the 1970s, as women attempted same-sex pairings, how did men of the same period embark on a solitary journey into an "internal" America?
　　In the 1980s, how did the emerging "nuclear family hegemony" collaborate with humanism to give rise to the tragedy of Tongzhi people?
　　After the foreign terms "AIDS," "Tongzhi," and "queer" entered Taiwan at the turn of the century, how did they interact and rewrite each other within the local context?
　　By the 21st century, how did Taiwanese Tongzhi transition into "liquid modernity"?

　　For six decades, Taiwanese Tongzhi literature has been filled with unspeakable secrets of fear, exclusion, humiliation, destruction, and secret blessings. Chi Ta-wei's "History of Tongzhi Literature" is like a cat tiptoeing back to review the journey of these unspeakable secrets. The "proactive strategy" for selecting texts for discussion in this book is "to seek breadth over depth," rather than "to seek depth over breadth": each chapter roughly corresponds to a decade (e.g., the 1960s), and each chapter avoids focusing on the extremely few, highly elite two or three types of Taiwanese Tongzhi literature from that era. Instead, it endeavors to include more than ten texts from the same decade to present the polyphonic nature of each period.

　　The local Taiwanese documents cited in "The History of Tongzhi Literature" can be traced back to the early 20th century and extend to the early 21st century. Over a period of more than a hundred years, Taiwanese printed texts "presenting homosexuality" (including beautiful essays "considered literary works," as well as social news reports "not considered literary works") have almost never been absent in any era. Printed materials presenting homosexuality have a history of over a hundred years. This book meticulously recounts six decades of history (six decades; sixty years), including (1) the 1950s; (2) the 1960s; (3) the 1970s; (4) the 1980s; (5) the turn of the century; and (6) the early 21st century, spanning three periods: (1) the pre-Cold War period (from the early 20th century to the 1940s, i.e., the Japanese colonial period in Taiwan), (2) the Cold War period (from the 1950s onwards, i.e., the KMT rule in Taiwan), and (3) the post-Cold War period (from the turn of the 20th century to the early 21st century).

　　This book is divided into 8 chapters. Chapter 1, "Introduction – The Invention of Taiwan," briefly and concisely states: "The history of Tongzhi literature is an invention of Taiwan," emphasizing that "Tongzhi literature" can be regarded not only as a "genre" but also as a "field": a field that needs to acknowledge the contributions of readers in addition to valuing authors, and needs to create an environment for polyphonic textual dialogue. At the same time, this chapter also explains that "the history of Tongzhi literature" is a "public history" that challenges "mainstream history."

　　Chapter 2, "Pai Hsien-yung's Predecessors and Peers – From the Early 20th Century to the 1960s," points out that while Pai Hsien-yung was one of the pioneers in the history of Taiwanese Tongzhi literature, pioneers also have their own predecessors and peers. Long before Pai Hsien-yung, various predecessors were already involved in presenting homosexuality.

　　Chapter 3, "Love and Money Come Together – Female-Female Relationships in the 1970s," indicates that Taiwanese lesbian literature did not appear intensely until the 1970s. Although newspapers during the Japanese colonial period and the early post-war era occasionally reported on lesbian news, the trend of lesbian literature did not emerge until the 70s. This literary trend echoed changes in women's economic status in real life: thanks to the "blessing" of the Cold War's global configuration, Taiwan became an OEM factory for the United States, thus experiencing an "economic take-off" in the 70s. Local women entered factories and the workforce, gaining more economic autonomy and beginning to imagine a life together with other women.

　　Chapter 4, "Who Has American Time – Male Homosexuals in the 1970s," discovers that "America" finally made its much-anticipated appearance in Taiwanese literature: although post-war Taiwan was long dominated by the United States and literature in the 1960s already showed traces of American "modernism," it wasn't until the 70s that local literature explicitly began to write about "America": linking "alternative people" (male homosexuals) with "alternative spaces" (America), implying that "alternative people" could only survive in an "alternative country."

　　Chapter 5, "Leaving Home to Be Oneself – The 1980s," argues that the phenomenon of "homosexuals leaving home" drew a dividing line at the end of the 1970s: before the dividing line, Tongzhi individuals in Taiwanese literature rarely conflicted with their families; after the dividing line, Tongzhi individuals breaking with their families became almost an ironclad rule in Taiwanese literature.

　　Chapter 6, "Translating AIDS, Tongzhi, Queer – The Turn of the Century," experienced the historical turning point from the "Cold War era" to the "post-Cold War era," emphasizing that the phenomenon of "Tongzhi literature becoming prevalent at the end of the 20th century" can not only be attributed to the lifting of martial law in 1987 but also pushed back a bit further to the "translational encounters" with the word "AIDS" and its related contexts.

　　Chapter 7, "Solid or Liquid Tongzhi Modernity – Early 21st Century," borrows sociologist Zygmunt Bauman's concept of "liquid modernity" to explain the changes faced by Tongzhi literature: the rise of a "decentered" liquid modernity, while a solid modernity centered on existing systems continues to lose ground.

　　"Afterword – Where is China" rather than discussing the relationship between "Tongzhi literature" and "Chinese literature," aims to point out a less-discussed fact: the decades-long development of Tongzhi literary history just happens to witness the "presence/absence" of "China" changing with the times.