Bai Xianyong / Zhu Tianwen

Overall summary of stories

Bai Xianyong —

Winter Nights

  • Elderly intellectuals reflect on exile and displacement after retreat to Taiwan

  • Nostalgia for mainland China

  • Emotional and cultural loss dominate narrative

Zhu Tianwen —

Fin de Siècle Splendor(1990)

  • Urban Taipei story focused on consumer culture and modern alienation

  • Fragmented identity and postmodern urban experience

  • Reflects late-capitalist Taiwan

Historical background

  • Japanese colonial Taiwan (1895–1945)

  • KMT retreat to Taiwan in 1949

  • White Terror and martial law

  • Taiwan modernism (1960s–70s)

  • Economic boom and globalization

Dates

  • 1949: Nationalists retreat to Taiwan

  • 1987: Martial law lifted

  • 1960s–70s: Taiwan modernism

  • 1990: Fin de Siècle Splendor

Important names

  • Chiang Kai-shek

  • Chen Ruoxi

  • T.S. Eliot

  • Taiwanese modernists

Theories / concepts

  • Exile literature

  • Taiwan identity

  • Modernism

  • Postmodernism

  • Urban alienation

  • Nostalgia

Themes

  • Memory

  • Displacement

  • Cosmopolitanism

  • Consumerism

  • Urban decay

  • Identity crisis

  • Historical fragmentation