Huang Chun-ming

Huang Chun-ming is one of Taiwan's most important and beloved literary figures — a central voice in the nativist (xiangtu) literary movement of the 1970s that turned Taiwanese fiction away from modernist experimentation and towards the lives of rural and working-class Taiwanese. His stories — collected in The Drowning of an Old Cat, The Gong, and other volumes — are remarkable for their warmth, their humour, and their genuine respect for the people they depict.

Born in Ilan in 1939, Huang writes about the dispossessed — fishermen, prostitutes, rural migrants, people pushed to the margins of Taiwan's rapid modernisation — with both political anger and human compassion. Several of his stories have been adapted into significant Taiwanese films. He has also written children's books and plays, and his influence on subsequent generations of Taiwanese writers has been enormous.