Short story
The Gong
鑼
Huang Chun-ming · 1969
Synopsis
In a small town in Taiwan, Han Qinzai earned his living as a town crier, announcing the news to the sound of his gong. Advertising cars with loudspeakers have taken this trade from him, and he has long been without work. The story follows this little man left behind by modernisation, torn between a pride that will not give way and the illusions he holds about himself.
Context
The text appeared in 1969 in the ninth issue of Wenxue jikan, a quarterly in which the author had published almost all his stories since 1966 and which welcomed nativist literature. It gave its title to a collection published in Taipei in 1974 by Yuanjing. The author has said that his town crier really existed among the people of Luodong. The French translation appeared in 2001 in a series devoted to Taiwanese letters, edited by Isabelle Rabut and Angel Pino; Howard Goldblatt translated it into English.
Who it is for
For discovering the great Taiwanese storyteller of the common people, in his French translation published by Actes Sud.
Prizes and reception
It is among the thirty classics of Taiwanese literature chosen at the end of the nineties.
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