Short stories
Taipei People
臺北人
Pai Hsien-yung · 1971
Synopsis
Fourteen stories about those who fled the mainland with the Kuomintang and live in Taipei in the fifties. A singer turned cabaret performer, a taxi dancer past her prime, a retired battalion commander, officers and hostesses try to hold on to the hours of glory from before exile: a first love, a night's fame, the heroism of former days, revived at mahjong tables and at birthday banquets.
Context
Pai wrote these stories in the last years of the sixties, in California, and published them in 1971 with his own publishing house in Taipei. He translated them into English with Patia Yasin, under the direction of George Kao, and the book appeared in the United States in 1982. André Lévy translated it into French for Flammarion in 1997, reissued in paperback by Picquier in 2000. The weekly Yazhou Zhoukan ranked it seventh among the hundred best Chinese fictions of the twentieth century.
Who it is for
Short stories of polished writing, readable in French; each can be read on its own, and together they sketch a generation.
Prizes and reception
Counted among the major works of modern Chinese literature, often reissued in Taipei as well as in English.
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