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Taiwan Lecture SeriesReconstructing Survival Mechanisms – Travel Narrations of Yin Hai-guang and Wu Zhuo-liu during the Martial Law Period

  • Tuesday, 21. May 2024, 13:00 Uhr
  • Institut für Sinologie, Raum 010.01.05, Voßstraße 2, 69115 Heidelberg
    • Prof. LIN Shu-Hui, National Taiwan Normal University (Taiwan), Department of Taiwan Culture, Languages and Literature

Traveling far away creates distance – useful to critical (philosophical) thinking. Travelers are in a unique position to review the past, revise their outlook on life, and choose a direction for the future. Yin Hai-guang wrote his travelogues as a visiting scholar to the Unitied States of America in 1955. They not only have a meaning as life reconstructions but they also implicitly criticize Taiwan under martial law. From the travel narratives that Yin published in different media, among them Free China 自由中國and, “Motherland Weekly” 祖國周刊, we find the use of space/travel as metaphor in the reconstruction of his life as self-narrative – the shore of Lake Washington in Seattle, USA, for example, becomes a metaphor of longing for freedom. Reading Yin Hai-guang’s travel narratives, readers are able to learn about some of the rather existentialist questions posing themselves to a Taiwanese in this very special era of Cold War.

About LIN Shu-Hui

LIN Shu-Hui is Professor at the Department of Taiwan Culture, Languages and Literature at National Taiwan Normal University. She specializes in research on travel writing, Taiwan literature, and culture. Her publications include Customs, Memories and Enlightenments: A Digital Archive of Taiwanese Cultural Discourse, The Mood of the Travelers: Taiwanese Travel Writings during the Japanese Colonial Period, Represent Culture: Imagined and Discourse of Moving during Modern Period in Taiwan, and Imagining Space-Time in Taiwan Fiction.

Alle Termine der Veranstaltung 'Taiwan Lecture Series'

This year’s “Taiwan Lecture Series” is devoted to questioning “Sinophone Authenticities” from cross-sectional perspectives. Approaching the topic “In Search for Home – Authenticity and Chineseness in Taiwan and the Sinophone World”, it will consist of four sections, and offer views from art, politics, literature and gender studies. It will begin with a section “Contesting Home – Artistic Renderings” with Taiwan Sound and Visual Artist FENG Chi-han (Taiwan/Hong Kong), a second section on “Post-Chineseness in Taiwan Politics” with SHIH Chih-yu (National Taiwan University), a third on “Travel Writing and Taiwan Identities” with LIN Shu-hui (National Taiwan Normal University), and a last section on “Homing Feminism in the Sinophone World” with Paola ZAMPERINI (Northwestern University).