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Taiwan is a multi-cultural, multi-ethnicity country. Writers from other places would also be regarded as “a member of this family” as long as they sincerely identify themselves with this land and the culture, and are willing to participate in the making of this community.
At the age of twenty, Pao Hsiao-huei came to Taiwan to seek shelter from war. Now she is already seventy-eight years old. For the past fifty years, she “ate Taiwan rice, drink Taiwan water and tea.” She felt gratitude and saw Taiwan as a source of her inspirations because she had nothing when she first came here and now she is living a very comfortable life. This essay is an investigation of her journey—her family background, hardship as a refugee, how she started writing, and her interactions with other writers. A major focus of my investigation is the psychological factors in her writings due to the ambivalence of having two “homelands” on this side and the other side of the Taiwan Strait. Pao once said, “Memory is a re-examination of one’s own experience. We sometimes can get to the realization of certain truth from this examination.” (The Preface of Looking Back--with Infinite Love). With her writings, mostly essays, on topics such as memories of hometown, love for her family, advices to younger generations, she portrayed the changes and progress that Taiwan went through for the past fifty years. In this thesis, I will also try to analyze the writing skills in her essays.
This thesis is a recognition to the accomplishment of a writer coming from the other side of the Taiwan Strait, but have lived here for the most part of her life, have eventually identified herself with this land, and have contributed a lot to this community with her writings.
This thesis is divided into seven chapters. Chapter one is a discussion of my motivation, goals, and sources. Chapter two is the family background of Miss Pao. Chapter three deals with Miss Pao’s writing experience, from the time she started writing, the progress of her writing, to the time she “make friends by writing.” In chapter four, I divide Miss Pao’s writing career into three stages: early experimental stage, creative writing stage, and later years. The fifth chapter is an analysis of Miss Pao’s writing on her two hometowns, China and Taiwan. The Sixth chapter deals with the unique languages styles in Miss Pao’s essays, such as the “colloquial languages,” “rhetorical languages” and “argumentative languages.” My study of Miss Pao’s essay will be concluded with chapter seven.
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