The Taste of Apples

273 Pages·2001·0.97 MB·English

by  Huang Chun-ming

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THE TASTE OF APPLES
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Modern Chinese Literature from Taiwan
editorial board
Pang-yuan Chi
Göran Malmqvist
David Der-wei Wang, Coordinator
Rose, Rose, I Love You
Wang Chen-ho
Three-Legged Horse
Cheng Ch’ing-wen
Notes of a Desolate Man
Chu T’ien-wen
A Thousand Moons on a Thousand Rivers
Hsiao Li-hung
Wild Kids: Two Novels About Growing Up
Chang Ta-chun
Frontier Taiwan: An Anthology of Modern
Chinese Poetry
Michelle Yeh and N.G.D. Malmqvist, editors
Wintry Night
Li Qiao
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THE TASTE OF APPLES
•
Huang Chun-ming
Translated by
Howard Goldblatt
columbia university press new york
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Columbia University Press wishes to express its appreciation for assistance given by the
Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange in the preparation of
the translation and in the publication of this series.
columbia university press
publishers since 1893
new york chichester, west sussex
copyright © 2001 columbia university press
all rights reserved
Most of these stories were first published, in slightly modified form, by Indiana University
Press in the collection The Drowning of an Old Cat and Other Storiesby Hwang Chun-ming,
translated by Howard Goldblatt (1980).
library of congress cataloging-in-publication data
Huang, Ch’un-ming, 1939–
[Drowning of an old cat, and other stories]
The taste of apples / Huang Chun-ming ; translated by Howard Goldblatt.
p. cm. — (Modern Chinese literature from Taiwan)
Originally published: The drowning of an old cat, and other stories. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1980.
Includes bibliographical reference.
ISBN0–231–11260–8 — ISBN 0–231–11261–6(pbk.)
1. Huang, Chº'n-ming, 1939– —Translations into English. I. Title. II. Goldblatt, Howard,
1939– III. Title. IV. Series.
PL2865.C56D76 2001
895.1'352—dc21 00–060260
Casebound editions of Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent
and durable acid-free paper.
Printed in the United States of America.
c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
p 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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Contents
•
translator’s note vii
preface xiii
The Fish 1
The Drowning of an Old Cat 11
His Son’s Big Doll 33
The Gong 55
Ringworms 125
The Taste of Apples 135
Xiaoqi’s Cap 157
The Two Sign Painters 183
Sayonara / Zaijian 209
bibliographic note 253
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Translator’s Note
•
It is ironic that Western readers were first exposed to Huang Chun-
ming’s fictional creations at a time when many of his Taiwan contempo-
raries considered the stories that make up the bulk of this anthology
passé. For someone then still so young and so talented, whose writings
were considered almost revolutionary in subject matter and in use of lan-
guage, to become so quickly a transitional figure is unfortunate though
not uncommon in a world that is changing so precipitously. In Taiwan,
where the ethnic dichotomy between the mainland Chinese and the
Taiwanese has not completely disappeared, and where the future itself is
very much in doubt, the process of change is even more greatly acceler-
ated. It may be that as a writer, Huang, whose stories of the Chinese in
Taiwan were a radical (and welcome) departure from the anti-Communist
fiction of the 1960s and the subsequent Western-influenced, often avant-
garde novels of the early 1960s, may have fallen victim to a social process
that he helped put into motion.
Huang Chun-ming writes primarily of rural Taiwan, a generally
closed society. He is thus regarded as a regional writer, a term that, while
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viii • Translator’s Note
accurate in the main, is limiting in describing both the contents of his
stories and their intrinsic universality. Consistent, clearly defined geo-
graphical settings and character types, as the novels of Faulkner and
others have shown, can aid an author in more fully developing his world
view and in expressing his personal observations of the people and places
with which he is most familiar. Huang’s characters (who are far more
important than the incidents in their lives) are generally uneducated, dis-
advantaged men, women, and children who must cope with assaults on
their traditionalism, hostility or condescension on the part of their urban
brethren, and of course all the debilitating effects of poverty. For the
most part, these characters are society’s rejects, people languishing on the
lowest rungs of the social ladder; they have suffered at the hands of their
peers or of their betters, and they quite often find life and society passing
them by. Witnesses to the inexorable disintegration of the community
they have known all their lives, they are in the unenviable position of
having to choose between obstructionism and passive acceptance of their
own anachronistic existence.
Huang could be forgiven if he were to allow his compassion and con-
cern for these people to influence his writing in the directions of ideal-
ization or pathos. To his credit, he does not. Rather, he infuses his char-
acters with dignity and wisdom, attributes on which no class has a
monopoly. This should not lead us to expect an uninterrupted series of
happy endings, human existence being what it is; despair born of a sense
of personal inadequacy or loss of livelihood, overreactions to simple mis-
understandings that place too great a strain on love, and the overpow-
ering need to be accepted and respected often lead to tragic ends in the
stories that follow.
There is a pattern to Huang’s stories, a progression from the small-
town environment of his hometown and the surrounding villages to the
larger urban areas and finally to the metropolis, Taipei. The supporting
roles played by the old-timers in “The Drowning of an Old Cat” and the
old bachelors in “The Gong” are replaced in the later works by Japanese
tourists (“Sayonara / Zaijian”), American military advisors, and foreign-
affairs policemen (“The Taste of Apples”). Pedicab drivers, gong beaters,
and “ad men” with sandwich boards over their shoulders give way to TV
reporters and clerks in large companies. Still, the dominant characters in
the stories collected here are deeply rooted in rural Taiwan; the major
exception, the narrator of “Sayonara / Zaijian,” is himself new to the big
city and is very close in background, interests, and personal situation to
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Translator’s Note • ix
Huang Chun-ming. In a word, rural Taiwan itself is often the central
character.
Lacking an education, speaking only their native Taiwanese dialect,
and unable to change their conservative, superstitious, unaffected ways,
these people are the unwitting and guileless victims of changing societal
values; even when they transcend their humble origins, overshadowing
all around them, their victory is only temporary. Certainly the greatest
threat to these people, as to so many of their kind throughout the world,
is the unremitting, merciless, and irreversible encroachment of “modern-
ization,” the introduction of highly appealing creature comforts and the
more efficient technology of an increasing industrialized society into
increasingly remote areas.
Huang Chun-ming is a humanist of the first order. He is a self-desig-
nated spokesman for the culturally disadvantaged and a prod to the con-
sciences of those who would lose sight of the human costs of a blind,
reckless adherence to “progress.” He comes to writing instinctively and
with no formal training. But what his works may lack in technical bril-
liance they easily gain in sheer readability and humor: the complex sen-
timents of his characters and their reactions to events are faithfully and
movingly captured in lively dialogue and uncomplicated narrative.
Huang does experiment on occasion, employing such devices as interior
monologue in something approaching stream-of-consciousness style or
using his cinematic background in shifting scenes and flashbacks, but he
is neither particularly innovative nor trendy where ficitonal techniques
are concerned. The success of his stories can be attributed to his being
content to let the characters tell their own stories.
Huang, who grew up in a rural Taiwan environment, has witnessed at
first hand the old and the new (including the transition from one to the
other) and the many and varied outside influences on his homeland—
from Japan, mainland China, and the West, particularly the United
States. All of this experience is reflected in his short stories and novellas,
and in such a way as to parallel the changes in Taiwan over the past few
decades. But the reader should not assume Huang’s work consists of
period literature only (a genre of writing that has diminished relevance
and appeal), for the prime element in the bulk of the stories presented
here is the author’s basic sense of humanity. For the Western reader, the
unfamiliar aspects of setting are transcended in most of the pieces by a
universal and timeless appeal in the depiction of man’s role in life, his
contradictions, his confrontations with society at large, his struggles with