The taste of apples

About

Rural Taiwan in the 1960s and 70s — a place caught between the old agricultural rhythms and the new industrial economy rolling in from the cities. Huang Chun-ming's linked stories follow villagers, children, and working families as they collide with modernization: an old man humiliated by an American advertising stunt, a boy whose innocence dissolves under the weight of adult failure, a family tasting imported apples for the first time. Huang writes with a tenderness that never softens into sentimentality. His anger at what development costs the powerless is precise, earned, and delivered through character rather than polemic. These are among the most important stories in Taiwanese literature — the moment a national fiction found its own voice, rooted in local soil rather than mainland nostalgia.