 Okay, good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to today's book launch. It is our great pleasure to welcome our speaker, Professor Xiao A-ting from Academia Cineca. In today's session, he is going to talk about his new book, Politics and Cultural Nativism in 1970s Taiwan, Youth, Narrative and Nationalism. So the whole thing started off because I heard about the publication of this new book in the summer. I talked to David and we both agree that it would be fantastic to invite him to show us to share his research outcome. This book is hot off the press and was only on the market for a few days. The Sewers Library has already ordered an e-copy. I was told just now that a student will be able to access the e-book via a Sewers Library from tomorrow. So, you know, it's very lucky that you heard the introduction today, then you can actually read the book tomorrow. Before the talk, allow me introduce Professor Xiao. He gained his PhD in sociology at the University of California, San Diego. His expertise ranges from cultural nationalism, language, Taiwanese literature, ethnicity, collective memory, sociology of generation that's a new one, and discourse. He's now a research fellow, professor, and deputy director of the Institute of Sociology, Academia, and Cineca. Our students are familiar with his work, the first book in English, Contemporary Taiwanese Cultural Nationalism. Many chapters of this book are on our reading list, and this book focuses on the rise of cultural nationalism in Taiwan, and also its role in Taiwan's political change and democratization. This older book concentrates on the importance of intellectuals, writers, and linguists. In many ways, that book explores the emergence of cultural nationalism in the 1980s and 90s. It is extremely helpful for students who are interested in Taiwan's nationalism or nation building through culture during this period. Compared to his first book, which was published in 2000, the new book Politics and Cultural Nativism in 1970s Taiwan has shifted his research focus to the earlier and seemingly more murkier 1970s. I always told students that cultural change as well as political transformation do not happen overnight. Taiwanese transitions started well before the lifting of martial law. Unfortunately, there has been very little research on this period written in English, especially in the cultural sphere. The publication of this book is timely and long overdue. I read his Chinese version. He describes these two books, one on cultural nationalism in the 80s and 90s, and this new one like Twins. In many ways, the two books are tightly interconnected and can be read in tandem. They enable us to get a more nuanced reading of Taiwan's cultural nationalism and political change. In this book, Professor Xiao explores the turning point in Taiwan's history and traces the trajectory of changing political climate from the perspective of generational change, especially focusing on the rise of Taiwan's baby boomers in the 1970s. It places particular importance on the rise of a younger generation who had no firsthand personal experience of life on the mainland and offers a closer reading of a period of drastic change, openly challenging the status quo and shifting their concerns from China to Taiwan. This is really a crucial moment of bubbling and self-doubting and challenging the KMT regime. Apart from the two major monographs, you can see quite a few of his co-edited books in our library. To find out more, please search our library. I think we have at least five books either authored by him or co-edited by him. By tomorrow, there will be six. He told me that his recent research interests are drawn to the ocean. One direction explores the relationship between the ocean fishing village tourism and national imagination in Taiwan. And the other imagines the role of Taiwan's civil society actors in the territorial dispute over Diao Yutai Island. So two, again, links for very different topics. After his presentation, we will open the floor for Q&A. May I remind you to post your questions using the chat function? If we have loads, then we'll have to take chances that we probably will choose yours. If there are not so many, and we can actually ask you to come and ask the question yourself. So you can find a speech bubble icon at the top of the screen and type your question there so we know you put your question forward. So without further ado, Professor Xiao, the floor is yours. Thank you. Thank you so much for the kindly introduction. I would like to thank Professor Zhang Piyin for inviting me to talk about my new book. My book is a story about the 1970s Taiwan, about the critical role the younger generation played in the political and cultural change in this decade. And about the relationship between the political and cultural change in the 1970s on the one hand and the democratization and the indigeneration of Taiwan since the 1980s on the other. Today I will introduction the new book to you by telling this story very briefly. So first let me show my power point. Okay, before I talk about the new book I would like to say something about my previous book, contemporary Taiwanese cultural nationalism. As Professor Zhang mentioned just now, this old book analyzed how Taiwanese nationalism influenced the literature, historiography, and the language revival movement in the 1980s and the 1990s. I deal with the 1970s very briefly in this previous book. And when I finished writing the manuscript of this book, I realized that I think I have to work on 1970s Taiwan as an independent project. There are two reasons for this. First, so far most of the research on Taiwan's democratization, national identity, and the Taiwanese nationalism focuses on the 1980s and after. Except for the large number of studies of Xiang Tu, Wen Xue, nativist literature of the 1970s, this decade has been an understudied period even up to now. The second reason is that even those scholars who acknowledge the significance of political cultural change in the 1970s have paid little attention to the effects of generational factors in political and cultural change in the 1970s. Also scholars have ignored the continuing influence of Chinese nationalism on political and cultural activists of the younger generation in this decade. That is in terms of national consciousness among political and cultural dissidents. Generally speaking, there was a difference between the 1970s on the one hand and the 1980s and the beyond on the other. My new book is intended to fill these two research gaps. I argue that to achieve this purpose, we need a detailed investigation of the efforts of three groups of young intellectuals in the 1970s. The first group was cultural activists who rediscovered the Taiwan New Literature, Taiwan Xin Wen Xue. That is modern literature written by Chinese authors in the Japanese colonial period. The second group was writers and advocates of a socially conscious nativist literature. And the third group was young intellectuals who joined the political opposition movement, especially those young political dissidents who studied the Chinese anti-colonial movement that challenged Japanese rule in the 1920s. Okay, so far, so is my voice clear to you? Yes. Okay, then I will continue. Whether these groups or these young political and cultural dissidents were studying the colonial past or representing or even trying to change the present, these young dissidents were Chinese in their consciousness. In general, they drew on the Chinese national story constructed and allocated by the KMT to make sense of Taiwan's past and present. This story or narrative is just like what you see on my PowerPoint. But I'm sorry that I don't have time to get into these details. You can just read it. These young intellectuals narrated their lives in this public and collective story of China's fall and the rise. A story that situated them in time and structured their agency. What changed during this decade is that Taiwan's colonial history and contemporary problems became more and more important in this narrative, in this national narrative. We can say that for almost everyone, however, this master narrative, according to which they were all Chinese when unchallenged until the 1980s. The continual influence of this master narrative in Taiwan and its eventual decline are very important for us to study today because of the significance of the very same master narrative in the PRC. The key element of this national narrative is the same recovery from national humiliation that once inspired the Chinese intellectuals to political and cultural activism in the 1970s. As I will show in the presentation today, for many political and cultural dissidents, this decade was an early stage of transition from an old Chinese identity to a new Chinese consciousness. So where should the story about the 1970s Taiwan start? My book starts it with the 1970s and 1960s. For the Chinese government in exile, the 1960s was a decade of consolidation and the successful repression of the opposition. Like many countries, Taiwan experienced the rapid growth of both young population and the higher education in the early post-war period. So as a result, a new highly educated generation, including members from local Tarnese and mainland backgrounds were emerging. Since the rise of modern Chinese nationalism in the late 19th century, young people in Taiwan that came to maturity in the 1960s was the first generation that the KMT government had successfully indoctrinated with its particular version of Chinese nationalism in peacetime situation. The KMT ideology dominated the post-war generation's education and had a very powerful assimilating effect on their political attitudes. Also, the island society was shaped by the exile mentality of mainlanders, which emphasized the possibility of returning to their old homes on the Chinese mainland. The government initiated patriotism and anti-communism prevailed in the 1960s. But unlike many other places in the world that went through the disturbance of the 60s brought about by the student and youth movements, colleges and college students and young intellectuals in Taiwan did not create any significant disturbance. The KMT's tight political control created a politically inactive young generation. It was not until the 1970s that the KMT's authoritarian rule encountered major challenges and significant political and cultural changes occurred. And these changes were brought about mainly by diplomatic failures. At the end of 1969, Taiwan and Japan began to dispute the sovereignty of the Diaozi Islands when the U.S. was preparing to return them to Japan. Then and in the spring of 1971, college students in northern Taiwan organized the defense of the Diaozi movement, Baodiao, Baowei, Diaozi Taiyoon Dong or Baodiao to protest against the U.S. and Japan. The Diaozi incident was a turning point, but it was only in the beginning of Taiwan's diplomatic failures in this decade. It was followed by the exclusion of Taiwan from the United Nations. Also, the U.S. began to normalize the relations with China. Then Taiwan blocked off relations with increasingly more countries such as Japan when they recognized the PRC. From the very beginning of the Diaozi incident, college students, especially those at the National Taiwan University, NTU, became more and more enthusiastic about the issues of social political reforms. As one NTU student put it at the time, the Diaozi incident created, I quote, a new situation that never happened in the previous 20 years. It was the first time student interest had been so eagerly focused on political and social issues. The students demanded not only such campus reform as educational independence and university democratization, they also demanded a general social political reform, even the complete re-election of the National Assembly, and the legislative union, which was still a politically sensitive issue at that time. These college students were supported by a group of young reformist intellectuals surrounding the general, the intellectual, as many researchers have pointed out, rapid and dramatic social changes such as war, civil disorder, exile, and so on, typically create painful experience to people and become major traumatic events. In history, the kind of traumatic events usually transform people of the same or similar age into politically or socially active groups with a strong generational identity. This typically happens as a result of a process of awakening. In this process, people develop a critical consciousness about the status quo, and it may take action accordingly. This pretty much the case of those college students and young intellectuals who were shocked by the Diaozi incident, and the Taiwan's continuing major diplomatic failures. They argued that for Taiwan to survive the difficult situation, the KMD government must abolish the exile mentality and wake up from the dream of retaking the Chinese melon and open its eyes to the true reality of Taiwan. At the beginning of the 1970s, these awakened college students and young intellectuals became a new social force that demanded democracy and social political reforms based on a return to reality idea. That is the idea of hui gui xian si. However, after two years of social political activism following the Diaozi incident, by 1974, the college students and young intellectuals were suppressed into silence by the KMD. But as we see that the suppression of the social and the political activism did not mean the disappearance of what I called the return to reality generation. On the country, many awakened young people found alternative ways to realize their reformist aspiration, such as joining the emerging opposition movement, the Dangai movement, led by young local Chinese politicians, Wang Xinjie and Pang Linxiang. In addition, the nativist cultural currents began to rise, which included research on modern literature and social political activism of the Japanese colonial period. I mean, these cultural currents also included the promotion of a nativist literature with the strong social critical consciousness. The main initiators of these cultural currents were precisely awakened young intellectuals and college students. As I have mentioned, the KMD ideological indoctrination had a powerful assimilating effect on both local Chinese and mainland young people. In this decade, those young political dissidents and cultural activists of local Chinese background who promoted nativism relied mainly on the historical narrative of Chinese nationalism as a frame of reference to make sense of their contemporary opposition movement or modern literature and social political activism of the Japanese colonial period. In general, they shared a sense of Chinese national identity, but they began to challenge the KMD ideology that they took for granted when they grew up in the 1960s by rediscovering Taiwan's past and promoting return to reality and the native soil. Here are some publications authored by some intellectuals of the return to reality generation. All of these have titles which demonstrated their strong generational identity and reformist passion. These are just selective examples of many such publications in the 1970s. You can see those book titles. Now for the rest of my talk, I would like to focus on the three groups of young political and cultural activists in the 1970s which were most significant to the following political democratization, cultural indigenization, historical rewriting, and so on and so forth. Let me start with the rediscovery of modern literature of the Japanese colonial period. Until the beginning of the 1970s, little had been known about the history of modern literature written by Chinese authors under the Japanese. In the early 1970s, when the awakened young intellectuals of local Chinese background tried to rediscover Taiwan's past, their focus was on the Japanese colonial period. In May 1972, Tsuen Sao Tin published an article entitled China's Main Fourth Movement and the New Literature Movement in Taiwan. In the magazine, The Intellectual. So he became the pioneer of a general investigation of the colonial literary history in this decade. In the year before Tsuen Sao Tin published this article, Taiwan suffered a series of diplomatic setbacks, including the Giao Yitai incident, the withdrawal from the UN, and so on. As I mentioned during this period, the magazine, The Intellectual, which supported the reform of the college students, became a discursive center that called for political and social reforms. As a native Chinese, Tsuen Sao Tin was precisely the president of this magazine. Also, he was one of the major advocates of the complete re-election of the National Assembly and the Legislative Union, which were dominated by the older generation of Melendez. In his pioneering article, under the framework of the historical narrative of Chinese nationalism, he defined the nature of modern literature written by the Chinese authors under Japanese colonialism as a form of Chinese nationalist resistance. He also described it as part of the changes brought about by China's literary revolution of May 4, 1919. After the publication of Tsuen Sao Tin's article, many young intellectuals followed him and devoted themselves to rediscovering the history of modern literature of the colonial period. The interpretive framework on which they relied to understand the significance of the modern literature written by the Chinese under the Japanese rule was a little different from that in Tsuen Sao Tin's article. As a result of more than a thousand of writers of an older generation, including Yang Kui, Song Li He, Lai He, Lü He Ruo, Wu Zuo Liu, Wu Xin Rong, Zhang Shengjie, and so on, were rediscovered. Their works were republished and attracted an increasing number of young admirers. They were widely read with eagerness among these young admirers were, for example, Zhang Liangze and Lin Rui Ming, who both later became leading researchers of Taiwanese literature and major promoters of cultural indigenization. In discussing how Yang Kui's story described the suffering of the Chinese people under the Japanese rule, Lin Rui Ming wrote at the time that, let me quote, this was a faith that the Chinese people had endured together. This is the larger meaning of Yang Kui's works. He wrote about the background with which he was familiar, about the grief of the sons and daughters of China. And in a broader sense, they are originally part of the harvest of Chinese literature. And the spirit of Yang Kui has already been revitalized by the younger generation. This newfound strength is China's hope for the future, unquote. So, like Lin Rui Ming, many young intellectuals tried to define the present situation and find out the future by rediscovering the past under the framework of China's national narrative. They tried to know who they said, who themselves were by connecting their own generation to the previous. Now I would like to move on to the relationship between nativist literature and significant awakening in the younger generation. As I pointed out, the rediscovery of Taiwan's modern literature of the colonial period began with Chen Xiaotian's 1972 article, China's main fourth movement and the new literature movement in Taiwan. More and more young intellectuals were eager to rediscover and study the colonial literary legacy. Meanwhile, a nativist literature was emerging. These literary currents mutually reinforced one another. Many promoters of nativist literature were also involved in the re-examination of colonial Taiwanese literature. Over the next several years, up to the nativist literature debate, Xiang Tu, Wen Xue, Lun Zhan in 1977, a large number of essays supporting nativist literature appeared in newspapers and magazines. Such low-quality writers as Chen Yin-Zhen, Wang Chun-Min, Wang Zhen-He, Yang Qing-Chu, and Wang Tu became a leading nativist writer. As a literary critic commented at the time, none of the young people of the nativist writers generation had ever seen what the Chinese mainland was like, and all had received the same education in post-war Taiwan. The young writers of nativist literature were typical examples of this generation that was deeply influenced by the PMT ideology and the exile mentality. But they were also clear examples of the return to reality generation that emerged in the context of Taiwan's diplomatic failures. Let me take Wang Tuo for example. In 1978, Wang Tuo became dan wise candidate for Ji Long city in national assembly elections. In an interview when asked about the event that had influenced him the most, that is the biggest turning point in his life, he replied in this way, quote, I think about the influence to me the most is a series of incidents from protecting the Taoist to leaving the event. I was educated by these continuing incidents. In the past, we only stayed in the classroom and only considered a few intellectual issues. But the defendant, the Taoist movement brought me in contact with the wider world of the masses. And for the first time in 30 years, we understand how to take action and how to think theoretically, think about why this whole state and the nation have turned out like this on court. As for as for other nativist writers such as Chen Yenzhen, Huang Zemin, Yang Qinzu, they all shared experiences similar to Wang Tuo's. Moreover, as far as the readership is concerned, let me quote another important literary critic, He Xin. On this point, He Xin was also a professor of Western literature. As he pointed out in his 1978 article, when talking about how the popularity of the reported literature, Bao Dao, Wen Xie, was stimulated by the nativist literature. He said, I quote, a new readership has formed many young intellectuals and youth who are entering the middle class. They are no longer in bondage to the past. They do not have experiences of the struggles against the Japanese and the communists on the Chinese mainland, which have become a psychological burden of their previous generation. Now they are getting to know themselves. These young people were born on Taiwan and have spent over 30 years growing up here. This explains why they are most concerned about their native land, the place where they were born and brought up, unquote. So in brief, not only the writers of nativist literature and the reporting literature, but also a readership to appreciate them represented the formation of the return to reality generation since the beginning of the 1970s. This generation's formation began at a time when Taiwan was confronting major international political change. Also, as I pointed out early, it involves a process of awakening for many young people to which nativist writers and their supporters belong. Now let's move to the third group, one part of my focus on my research in the new book. So let's look at the relationship between the return to reality generation and the Dang-Wai opposition movement. The opposition movement again, momentum in this decade, when anti-Chemding political dissidents began to develop an island-wide network of connections. Both Huang Xinjie and Kang Linxiang became leaders in Dang-Wai. In this period, members of the Dang-Wai generally had a very strong historical consciousness, a powerful sense of history. Their historical sense had two fundamental aspects. First, a deep awareness of generational identity, and second, a greater concern for Chinese history with the special interest in the history of Chinese anti-chlorian movements in the 1920s. This Dang-Wai special sense of history was first expressed by Kang Linxiang. In February 1975, at the legislative end, as a legislator, Kang Linxiang criticized the policy report given by the prime minister, Jiang Jinguo. He pointed out that people over 65 had dominated the leadership of government. He emphasized that about 87 percent of the population was composed of the generation under the age of 49. Therefore, he demanded that the KMD government listen to the voice of the younger generation, which would decide the future of Taiwan. Equally important is the fact that he urged the government to appreciate the significance of Taiwanese history and culture, especially the history of a variety of anti-Japanese movements motivated by modern political ideology in the 1920s. He argued that in 50 years of Japanese rule, the Chinese people suffered a pain and a sacrifice, no less than their compatriots on the Chinese melancholy during the anti-Japanese war. In fact, in each issue of the Taiwan political review, there was an article on the history of Chinese anti-colonial struggle. Taiwan political review was the very first Dang-Wai magazine in the 1970s, which was founded in 1975 by Huang Xinjie, Kang Linxiang, and Zhang Junhong, and others. As I have mentioned, although the political and social activism was suppressed by the KMD government in the early 1970s, many awakened young intellectuals who were younger than Huang Xinjie and Kang Linxiang joined the emerging opposition movement. These intellectuals represented a rising younger generation and show a strong generational consciousness. They usually referred to themselves as Dang-Wai, new generation, Dang-Wai, Xinsen Dai. For example, Zhang Junhong, who later became the chairman of the DPP, once described his generation as anxious and frustrated new generation under the KMD rule. He was the chief editor of the Dang-Wai magazine, Zhe Yi Dai Zazi, which was precisely entitled New Generation in English. Like the Taiwan political review, the other three most important Dang-Wai political magazines published before the 1979 Kaohsiung incident. That is, New Generation, the 80s, and Formosa represented many articles on the, presented many articles on the Chinese history, especially those about the anti-Japanese movements of the 1920s. Meanwhile, Huang Xiong wrote a series of books about the history of Chinese anti-colonialism, including the first biography of one of the major anti-colonial leaders, Jiang Weisui. Like many other young intellectuals who joined the Dang-Wai, Huang Xiong compared the anti-KMD pro-democracy Dang-Wai movement of the 1970s to the Chinese anti-colonial movement of the 1920s, showing the typical strong sense of history of the return to reality generation. According to Huang Xiong, Taiwanese anti-colonial activists were Chinese nationalists in their consciousness. He argued that their activities promoted the high national spirit of the Chinese people and made the Chinese compatriots proud of the Chinese nation. For this reason, they had nothing to apologize for to the ancestral land, much less to the Chinese nation. Huang Xiong hoped in his publications that his works would help the Chinese nation unite by promoting the spiritual legacy of the anti-colonial activists during the national crisis in the 1970s. Huang Xiong believed that the tradition of anti-colonial activism could give people a sense of connection and identity with the Chinese nation. By the way, as you may know, Huang Xiong served as chairperson of the Transitional Justice Commission in 2018, under the Tsai Ing-wen's administration. Another example was Li Xiu-lian, who later became Chen Sui-bian's vice president. In 1978, as a Dang-Wai candidate in the election for the National Assembly members, Li Xiu-lian published her book entitled Taiwan's Past and Future, Taiwan's Guo Chi i Weirai. It was the most systematic presentation of the Dang-Wai sense of history and their historical narrative. This book can be regarded as a precursor to the Chinese consciousness and the Chinese nationalism that arose in the 1980s. In her book, Li Xiu-lian emphasized Taiwan's positioning within China. Let me quote. Yes, Taiwan is the province of China. Most Taiwanese people's ancestors came from the Chinese mainland. And this is exactly why to love Taiwan, is to love China. To talk Taiwanese is to Chinese. To challenge Taiwanese culture is to challenge Chinese culture. And to deal with Taiwanese history is of course to deal with Chinese history. But Li Xiu-lian also argued that there is a similarity between the basic problems of women and the historical fate of the Taiwanese people. And that she wanted to transcend the traditional Sino-centric position and adopted the standpoint of Taiwan in itself. She described Taiwan's history as a continuous stream of immigration and colonization. The Spaniards, the Dutch, Chinese mean royalists under Kotsinga, the Qing and the Japanese, here for her, Li Xiu-lian were all colonizers who established foreign regimes. By saying this, Li Xiu-lian hinted that the KMT, like the previous rulers in Taiwan, was a colonizer, a foreign regime. She argued that the people of the island must fight for control of government and destiny. Li Xiu-lian's representation of Taiwanese history was radical and anticipated the later radicalization of the opposition movement. And its new historical narrative, due to the brutal suppression by the KMT government in the years following the Kaohsiung incident of December 1979. So, like those cultural activists who rediscovered the Taiwan neo-literature in the Japanese colonial period and the writers and supporters of nativist literature, the young political dissidents who studied the Taiwanese history, such as Huang Wangxiong, Li Xiu-lian, and other Taiwan magazine authors, drew on the historical narrative of Chinese nationalism as a frame of reference on the one hand, but tried to broader Taiwan's history and contemporary reality to their fellow country men's attention on the other. Before I move to the conclusion of my new book, let me quote a short essay by the writer-journalist Yang Zhao. He once characterized the 1970s in Taiwan as a period of discovering China, but he also argues, let me quote, we can use the term discover Taiwan to describe the core of thought in the 1970s, but people at that time in the 1970s thought what they discovered was China rather than Taiwan. As time passed into the 1970s, the concept of China itself became the most important object of controversy. The question for me in people's minds in fact was, could society we had developed and the life we were living in Taiwan be regarded as Chinese at all? Those who gave a positive answer to this question began to kiss the dubious eye on the historical and geographical symbolism used to represent China before, those byproducts of nostalgia, believing that they were really empty and ruthless. They argued that only when we grasped the present and what was close to us could we truly grasp China. This idea ran through the major cultural debates of the time, the idea that Taiwan in reality could stand for China. This idea was a way of spring of the subsequent discourse of native Chinese, but it first emerged in the form of a very vehement Chinese nationalism. I think the documentation and analysis in my new book supported Yang Zhao's tentative but insightful argument. In conclusion, I would like to say that Taiwan is still under the influence of the major political and cultural changes of the 1970s. My new book argues for a generational perspective on the political and cultural descent of this decade. My book analyzes the three major changes that were crucial to the following democratization and the indigenization process. They included the rediscovery of the history of modern literature and the social political activism of the Japanese colonial period, the promotion of nativist literature, and the opposition movement. I argue that these changes were pushed mainly by members of the post-war generation that had a strong generational consciousness, as well as a sense of Chinese identity with an orientation to Taiwan. For many of them, this decade was an early stage of transition from an old Chinese identity to a new Chinese consciousness. The combination of a powerful generational identity I mean the combination of a powerful generational identity and a strong historical consciousness was an important source of agency that motivated them to change the status quo. The Taiwan turned taken by the reality generation in the single mostly important reorientation in post-war Taiwan because it formed the matrix of the cultural politics of Taiwanese nationalism and democratization in the following decades. This return to reality generation has shaped the history of Taiwan over the last five decades. Now the members of this generation are getting old if not withering. Also in terms of historical comparison, research on the role of the post-war generation in political and cultural change in Taiwan should emphasize the critical decade of the 1970s, not the 1960s, the decade that had received the most attention in the West. Okay, so thank you for your listening and patience. Let me just stop here.