Lung Ying-Tai in Conversation with Barbara Mittler and Monika Li (Translator)
25.10.2023
Centre for Asian and Transcultural Studies (CATS)
CATS Auditorium (010.01.05)
Voßstrasse 2
69115 Heidelberg
An unsuccessful writer is sent by her Buddhist master to the foot of Mount Kavulungan in southern Taiwan for two years so that her restless nature can find peace there while observing nature, people and animals. When she meets a mysterious fourteen-year-old girl, she embarks on an adventure to the mysteries of Mount Kavulungan, the namesake mountain of Taiwanese author Lung Ying-tai's most recent book release. In 84 episodes, she tells a ghost story, a crime story, a love story, and more, taking her readers on a philosophical journey that leads into Taiwan's nature, history, traditions, and society. In conversation with Barbara Mittler (CATS) and translator Monika Li, Taiwan's most famous author will discuss her socially critical reflections on zeitgeist, experiences of lifeworlds as well as her own biographical journey and the multiple roles of an author in contemporary Taiwan.
Traditionally, Chinese intellectuals have taken several possible positions, that of serving the country/ruler as a chenshi 臣仕 / guan 官; that of critiquing the ruler directly, from outside the bureaucracy or from inside, as the official censor (who may then be risiking to lose his job, thus being/becoming the “pure official” qingguan 清官) and, thirdly, that of the critic from afar-only seemingly a “silent loner”-who is so abominated by the abuses of power that he is no longer willing to “wag his tail in human dirt,” a metaphor from Zhuangzi, a famous Chinese philosopher who lived around the 4th century BCE. Lung Ying-tai has taken on all three of these positions, and with her latest book-which will be the basis for the conversation and from which we will hear excerpts-moved from enfant terrible to minister to become the “silent loner”: Why?