"Taiwan Lu Xun" Chen Yingzhen Taipei Memorial Meeting: Not reading his works is a loss for young people

Chen Yingzhen

"Some young people in Taiwan don't know who Chen Ying really is." At the Taipei commemoration meeting for Chen Yingzhen, a well-known left-wing patriotic writer in Taiwan, the reporter heard an old gentleman next to him sigh. Chen Yingzhen's former friends in cultural circles, representatives of the Taiwan Region Political Victims Mutual Aid Association, Xia Chao magazine, the Workers' Party, the Fishing Protection Movement, Taiwan's ethnic minorities, and the reunification community, together with Chen Yingzhen's wife Chen Lina and other family members, a total of about 500 people gathered in Taipei a few days ago to reminisce about the deceased and pay tribute.

A lifetime of voice for the people

Chen Yingzhen is a loyal patriot, an outstanding representative of Taiwan compatriots, a well-known writer, and an outstanding leader and theoretician of Taiwan's patriotic reunification camp. He died in Beijing on November 22, 2016, at the age of 79. At the Taipei commemorative meeting, a 15-minute short film was first played to reproduce Chen Yingzhen's speeches on the practice fields of Taiwan's Workers' Party, the China Unification Alliance, the White Terror Rehabilitation Movement and the Anti-Arms Purchase Movement, and outlined Chen Yingzhen's lifelong struggle.

More than a dozen representatives from all walks of life in Taiwan then spoke in turn. The participants held that Chen Yingzhen has spent his life speaking out for the people of Taiwan, working for the peaceful reunification of the two sides of the strait, and shouting for the equality of society. His passing away is a major loss to Taiwan's patriotic reunification forces and the literary circles on both sides of the strait, but his spirit and the cause of his struggle will not be forgotten, but will be carried forward more and more.

Chen Mingzhong, a representative of Taiwan's white terror victims and a well-known "reunification leftist" figure, said: Chen Yingzhen is really a fairly important unified left theorist in Taiwan, and Taiwan's ideological struggle cannot do without the banner of Chen Yingzhen. Taiwanese writer Huang Chunming believes that Chen Yingzhen has "a signpost and a revelation role" for his writing. "Yingzhen told me that writing is not about moaning without illness, but about content." He talked about sharing his reading experience with Chen Yingzhen and mentioned a passage in the Communist Manifesto that stood on the side of the poor, chen Yingzhen's eyes were red, and the two embraced each other.

Known as "Taiwan Lu Xun"

Born in November 1937 in Miaoli County, Taiwan Province, Chen Yingzhen began writing literature during his university years and was imprisoned for resisting the dictatorship of the Taiwan authorities. After his release, he stood firm in Taiwan's cultural position for a long time and founded progressive publications such as "Human World" magazine to praise the patriotic tradition of Taiwan compatriots, criticize imperialist aggression and oppression, expose the absurdity and harm of "Taiwan independence," and inspire many Taiwan compatriots to embark on the road of pursuing the reunification of the motherland. In 1988, he participated in the creation of the Taiwan-China Unification Alliance and served as its chairman. In 2006, he settled in the mainland of the motherland and was appointed honorary vice chairman of the 7th and 8th National Committees of the China Writers Association.

Taiwanese scholar Wang Dewei likened Chen Yingzhen to "Lu Xun of Taiwan." Chen Yingzhen once said that Lu Xun gave him a motherland. "From Lu Xun's works, reading his deep concern and love for China made me think that China is my motherland from an early age." In 1968, Chen Yingzhen was arrested and imprisoned for 7 years for "organizing the reading of Marxist-Leninist, Lu Xun and other left-wing books", thus getting acquainted with Taiwanese political prisoners in the 1950s, "letting me know the story of a generation of people holding a noble soul and destroying their families for the sake of ideal causes", and since then turning cocoons into butterflies, "from a small intellectual in a town to a patriotic intellectual who is worried about the country and the people", and the left-wing tendency and strong humanistic care run through his creative career.

Why young people can't read

Taiwan's left-wing writer Lan Bozhou told reporters that Chen Yingzhen was born in Taiwan at the end of the Japanese occupation, saw the tragedy caused by cross-strait confrontation and the suffering of the people at the bottom of Taiwan, and had different concerns from other writers, leaving behind a very rich ideological and literary heritage.

Lan Bozhou said: Some young people in Taiwan cannot read Chen Yingzhen's works because they do not have enough basic knowledge of society and do not know enough about history, and they need to be driven by teachers and media to read Chen Yingzhen, so as to better understand Taiwan's history and cross-strait relations. As a person who is a generation later than Chen Yingzhen, I only really understood Taiwanese society after reading Chen Yingzhen. Chen Yingzhen, like Lu Xun, the classics are placed there, and not reading them is the loss of the young people themselves.

Lu Zhenghui, publisher of Taiwan's HumanIties Publishing House, said that the complete works of Chen Yingzhen are in preparation and are expected to be launched in November 2017 as a commemoration of the first anniversary of Chen Yingzhen's death.

(Originally titled "Not Reading His Works Is a Loss for Young People"——Chen Yingzhen Taipei Memorial Meeting Side Notes))