Alternative Chineseness

Abstract

This chapter examines articulations of Chineseness in two understudied novels from early post-war Taiwan – Pan Lei’s Red River Trilogy (1952) and Deng Kebao’s (Bo Yang’s) Alien Lands (1961). Drawing on his experience as a soldier, Pan’s work details how the protagonist is torn between his love for his paternal China and his maternal Vietnam. As for Deng’s work, it relies upon various veteran soldiers’ accounts to create a vivid tale of the Lone Army’s survival on the Burmese side of Sino-Burmese border. Both works fit into the category of anti-communist literature, demonstrating Taiwan’s connection with Southeast Asia in the Cold War context. Employing a close reading of both texts, this chapter points out how Pan wrapped his hybrid Chineseness in the genre of bildungsroman, whereas Deng’s reportage-esque narrative underlines an ultra-personal patriotism. Chineseness in both cases is manifested through “double negation”, with Pan’s protagonist rejecting Vietnamese communism and French colonialism, and the Lone Army disavowing all forms of communism and critiquing of the Chinese Nationalists. These two texts remind us of the need to historicize expressions of Chineseness. Diaspora in both cases affords the authors the possibility of acknowledging multiple homelands and destabilizing any prescribed version of Chineseness.