Wildfire Collection: Thirty Years Anniversary Edition

Chapter 24 Wildfire 20 Years (3)
This article pointing to the ruler’s creation of a “heaven and earth net”, in my estimation, should belong to the writing period of “Wildfire Collection”, but it could not be seen in her column until May of the following year ([-]). Long Yingtai handed it over to me, and it was published in the supplement of the Zili Evening News, which I edited at the time. "Zi Li Evening News" was a local newspaper that was relatively able to speak at the time. It had long demanded democracy, freedom and human rights from the authorities, and it was a thorn in the side of the Kuomintang. Reformers within the system are also helplessly monitored by "Big Brother".

Nevertheless, the "Long Yingtai Phenomenon" created by "Wild Fire Collection" from column to book publication should not be underestimated.Long Yingtai, who had just returned from Germany at that time, faced the one-party dictatorship of the Kuomintang, and dared to criticize social, education, and environmental issues in domestic newspapers, puncturing pustules; dared to say that "toilets are more important than bronze statues of great men", "If the government loses its trust in the people, the people must have the courage to file a lawsuit" to puncture the authority; dare to demand "Taiwan as their own home" before the Kuomintang emphasizes the "virtuous government" of "recovering Taiwan", puncture the myth...all for the people He said what was in his heart but did not dare to say it.Long Yingtai took these words into the system and said them loudly, and "incited" the people to dare to get angry.She gave the society under the pressure cooker an outlet to vent its anger, prevented the Kuomintang from suppressing the voice of the people with the usual means of suppressing and prohibiting "outside the party", and created a new generation of middle class that is still difficult to be affected by "outside the party" reforms outside the system. ideological twist.This is the significance of the Long Yingtai phenomenon, and it is also the impact of "Wild Fire Collection" on Taiwanese society in the 90s and [-]s.

From 20 to 20, 20 years have passed in the blink of an eye. In the past 20 years, Taiwan's society has changed rapidly. "Outside the party" established the Democratic Progressive Party and replaced the KMT in power. Two large and two small political parties Political formation, freedom of speech, and human rights protection have become like sunlight and air—the issues that Long Yingtai spoke out about 20 years ago seem to have been resolved. Twenty years ago, the stinky Tamsui River, industrial waste water pollution, environmental protection issues, traffic problems, and even the bronze statues, slogans, and inscriptions of great men in Long Yingtai's works have all been recognized by the society with consensus and overall efforts. improved.Getting angry, protesting loudly, marching, opposing the government, criticizing the head of the government, and even the positioning and future of Taiwan should be independent, and whether one's own identity is Taiwanese or Chinese have become issues that can be discussed and debated in the public sphere, although often We broke up unhappy, but at least the issue was shared, discussed, and "angry" - the wildfire at Long Yingtai [-] years ago is no longer "wild".

But the problem still exists.The problems that Long Yingtai questioned, was angry with, saw or did not see 20 years ago still continue to exist and continue to occur in the same or different form 20 years later.On October 28, [-], in her column titled "Whose Home is Taiwan?" --what!Liberation Day! "Prophecy for the title:

In Taiwan 40 years later, there will be people who want to leave but can’t, there are people who can leave but can’t, and there are people who are wholeheartedly here in this life; no matter what kind, as long as he regards this place as his “home”—willingly No matter, no matter what he has to do—as long as he regards this place as his "home", this place will be cared for, cultivated and cultivated.What I am afraid of is that after 40 years, if we still do not take care of this place, this home will fall into disrepair.Faith or not, that's all.

What Long Yingtai touched on 20 years ago, in today's terms, is the issue of Taiwan's identity.To go or not to go, to stay or not to stay, willing or not, if we can all regard Taiwan as our home, then the disputes between blue and green, unification and independence, Taiwanese and Chinese will just be our own housework and no outsiders will be allowed Interfering and not asking others to comment—a new era has begun, and the issues of Taiwanese people in the new era are emerging. As long as you agree with the land of Taiwan and the highest values ​​​​of democracy, freedom and human rights, to borrow the tone of Long Yingtai:

No matter where he is from, no matter where he is going, as long as he regards Taiwan as "home", as long as he regards the people who live with him in Taiwan as "human beings", as long as he regards the values ​​of freedom, democracy and human rights as "Value", Taiwan can become a place where everyone lives in peace, without pretending to be external.

20 years can be very long or very short. The wildfire that started at Longyingtai 20 years ago once showed the dark Taiwanese society an exit from centralized rule; I don't know what's going on?At this time, Long Yingtai's "Wild Fire Collection" is reprinted. On the one hand, it allows us to re-examine the era we have walked together and learn from the mirror of history. It is urgent and necessary to get rid of the shadow of ethnic group and political ideology, regardless of blood or geography, and to uphold democracy, freedom and human rights as common values.

can't turn off
Professor, Department of Foreign Languages, Sun Yat-Sen University, Taiwan

Yu Guangzhong

20 years ago, the first edition of "Wild Fire Collection" came out, and the hay and gale soon became a prairie fire. The fire not only heated up the cultural circle, but also smoked out the vast number of ordinary people. Voice.Not long after I went to Taipei to give a speech, I mentioned contemporary female writers, and once described the young author of "Wild Fire Collection" as a "tornado".

Although the wind of the "tornado" has been intermittent in the past 20 years, it has not been interrupted. After she stepped down from the position of "Cultural Director" of Taipei City, it rolled back again. As far as the Chinese language is concerned, the wind is surging and the grass is low.

"Wild fires are endless, and the spring breeze blows and regenerates." This book has been bestseller so far, which shows that there are some things in Taiwanese society and Chinese culture that are so stubborn that they will never be burned out.Even so, as long as the winds are strong and the wildfires are still raging, our bad habits and the cowardice and selfishness of the bottom of our culture cannot spread like weeds.

Yingtai is a man of temperament with high talent and learning, and his life's deeds actually depend on his true temperament.When she returned to Taiwan after studying in the United States, she taught at Central University and published novel reviews, as if she was going to become an academic critic.Fortunately, those miscellaneous essays were not extravagantly turned into "academic papers" with strings of quotations and notes; and since the publication of "Chinese, Why Are You Not Angry", she has obviously shifted from literary criticism to social criticism.Although "it is not yet dawn" and it will take three years to wait for the lifting of martial law, what she pointed out in her heroic pen is already a variety of afflictions of cultural awareness and social bad habits, so it aroused widespread resonance among those who are interested.

More than 70 years after the May Fourth Movement, Long Yingtai had to put on the uniform of an enlightened pioneer like Liang Qichao, and use direct and powerful essays, "often with emotion", to reveal the illness of our society.The style of writing is between Hu Shi's rationality and Lu Xun's sensibility, but they can both grasp the principle of dealing with things rather than people.

In "Is it useless to be angry?" "In the article, Yingtai once slammed Taipei as "the most lacklustre, ugliest, and messiest city I have ever seen."At that time, she probably never imagined that 15 years later, this ugly city would invite people who scolded it to change its temperament.She was willing to return to Taipei with Ma Ying-jeou to be the first director of the Cultural Bureau. Everyone was very worried, worrying how such a cultural hero could pass through the pinhole of the city council like a camel.Sure enough, less than ten days after taking office and before the session, she had already tasted a warning from a female member of parliament. Once speaking to a friend, she suddenly burst into tears.My friends are worried, can the tornado really withstand the long nights and dreams?

Unexpectedly, the wind can expand and contract. After three years, the hurricane turned into rain.Regardless of the maintenance or utilization of cultural heritage, former residences of elders, etc., or the arrangement and advocacy of cultural and artistic activities, Yingtai has gone all out and done impressively, which has truly enhanced the cultural temperament of Taipei City, and made Ma Ying-jeou's team a A striking dragon horse.In all the literary and artistic activities held or supervised by the Taipei City Cultural Bureau, I can witness that the director not only presided over it calmly, but also delivered speeches with substance, fluency and literary talent, whether in Chinese or English.

However, in the officialdom, of course, he has no time to write, and he is not allowed to speak freely.After three years of hard training, Tornado finally regained his freedom, with a wider range of speech, a bigger podium, more audience, and stronger wind.She moved the podium to Hong Kong, where the whole Chinese-speaking world is more concerned and listened to.Above reunification and independence, there are endless rumors between China and the West.As for reputation, she doesn't seem to care, because where the wind blows, the woods can't help but rustle.

third success

作家
Yu Qiuyu

Twenty years ago, when "Wildfires" first came out, there was both popularity and resistance, and both were strong.This is its first success, which proves that the social commentary it sends out has indeed deeply stirred the spiritual level of society.

Logically speaking, it is not easy for a work to achieve such success, because this "wildfire" suddenly reveals many ills in the society, and even if people avoid its light, they will leave memories in the dark.However, who knows that this "wildfire" not only has not been avoided, but has become the natural light of the world with the development of society. The concepts it expresses, those concepts that both awakened and angered many people at the beginning, are now It has gradually become popular in Taiwanese society in the past 20 years, and people are neither surprised nor angry about it.It has completed its historical mission, and this is its second success.

However, that's not the end of it.

In recent years, although the concepts of "Wild Fire Collection" have been generally popularized, there is still a great distance between behavioral practice and these concepts, and new problems in society are emerging one after another.All the problems involve the leading role of intellectuals on the spiritual and cultural quality of society.

At present, it is obviously the media that play a leading role in the spiritual and cultural quality of society.The media is power, and any power can turn violent.This is true in the case of authoritarianism, and it is also true in the case of free speech, but in a different direction.We have clearly seen time and time again that there are a large number of cultural people speaking in various media every day, but when the highest goal of the media is circulation and ratings, it has to form a mutual resource with the secular people. The bad relationships that shape each other, the accelerated motion that these relationships create, is difficult for almost any force to resist.Every moment, it cobbles together superficial morality, random evidence, out-of-control emotions, and inversions of importance, instigates large-scale audio-visual disasters again and again, and opens up rounds of more thirsty eyes and ears.Who should we turn to in this situation?Appeal to the self-inhibitedness of the populace?Turning to the media for conscience recovery?Or turn to the government's counseling?Obviously neither is possible nor appropriate.After thinking about it, I can only hope that the deafening voices of high-level cultural figures will surprise the world, just like the scene when "Wildfire Collection" came out.

This kind of miss, this kind of hope, is the third success of "Wildfire Collection".

This kind of longing, this kind of hope, has gone beyond the specific content of "Wild Fire Collection", but points to the cultural responsibility of intellectuals, as well as the breaking out of the door based on this responsibility, the accurate judgment after breaking out, and the accurate judgment after the accurate judgment. Wisdom words.Let people hear some baiting and look up from the media jam, take a moment and think.

This kind of longing, this kind of hope, also aims at the lack of culture in the current increasingly dense social discourse.Looking around, there are many "helping the world strategies" in the media, and the debates among them are also very intense, mainly political discourse, followed by economic discourse, and then large and small social life discourse, but few people start from the collective cultural psychological structure. Come up to discuss the current problems encountered.In fact, this deep collective cultural and psychological structure is where the secret hole lies, the key.This is exactly as I repeatedly said in "Lend My Life", the "Cultural Revolution" in the mainland seemed to be a political movement and seemed to destroy culture, but it was actually a product of culture.Therefore, analyzing the "Cultural Revolution" politically is a superficial analysis, while analyzing the "Cultural Revolution" culturally is a deep analysis. "Wildfire Collection" analyzed the problems of Chinese people from the perspective of collective cultural and psychological structure 20 years ago, and such an analysis has become empty in today's media.

"Wild Fire Collection" was published 20 years ago in Taiwan, but 17 years later in mainland China, three years later.Judging from the cultural exchanges between the two sides of the strait at that time, it was considered fast.As far as the mainland is concerned, many of the concepts of "Wildfire Collection" that have been popularized in Taiwan have yet to be popularized. In recent years, the proliferation of media violence and the poverty of cultural discourse are superimposed on the deformed authority and deformed freedom. The situation is even more surly due to the background of the two aspects.In this regard, I have a deep experience myself, and I have exchanged this experience with Long Yingtai many times.Therefore, the above-mentioned longing and expectation are naturally more earnest.

Long Yingtai is my friend.For unknown reasons, we always met unexpectedly again and again in the ancient city of Xi'an, and every time we met another friend, Jia Pingwa.She once expressed solidarity and condolences to me who was framed and slandered in mainland China through TV cameras.Later, her remarks were criticized by some "critics" in mainland China. The cruelty of her words far exceeded what I suffered, but I didn't know how to comfort her.A few years ago, she served as the director of the Cultural Bureau of Taipei City. I visited her office and saw that she had done a lot of construction, preservation, and promotion to improve the cultural taste of Taipei City, and was widely supported by citizens.This shows that a true cultural critic should also be an excellent cultural builder, since criticism and construction are two sides of the same thing.After reading her achievements in cultural construction, people will be able to understand the book "Wildfire Collection" 20 years ago.

20 years is called a generation in Chinese traditional habits.If a book can still become a hot topic in society 20 years later, it proves that this book can be called "a generation of writing".

Congratulations, my friend!
wildfire
Professor, Department of Fine Arts, National Taiwan Normal University

He Huaishuo

It has been 20 years since "Wildfires" was published.

In the past 20 years, the world has undergone great changes, mainland China and Taiwan have undergone great changes, and society and life have also rapidly become unprepared.

It was at the end of 800 when Long Yingtai wrote "Chinese, Why Are You Not Angry" - the first article of "Wildfire".At the time she wrote that Taiwan was "300 million cowardly and selfish Chinese".Now, both the government and the opposition say that there are 300 million Taiwan compatriots.However, there are no population statistics for many years now, and the number is probably less than 14 million.Many Taiwanese businessmen went to the mainland, together with their families and many people who settled in the mainland.Coupled with the sharp decrease in newborns in Taiwan, and the fact that one person commits suicide almost every two and a half hours, there were as many as 50 people a day a few days ago; It has increased to four or five times, and has gradually decreased in recent years.The factors involved are complex and there are many levels of problems. If you study in depth, you can really get a glimpse of the whole leopard.If Long Yingtai were to write this article now, it would probably not be easy to use a title like "Chinese, why are you not angry".Because there is not even a "full name" for the "person" of the residents on this land that does not cause controversy.

In the past 20 years, a few of the problems criticized by Long Yingtai in "Wild Fire Collection" have been improved due to social evolution; many problems have not been improved, but have intensified; there are many new problems that were unimaginable 20 years ago , burst out endlessly.

(End of this chapter)