A New Proximity: Chinese Literature in the People's Republic and on Taiwan

The rapidly changing interrelationship between the literatures of Taiwan and mainland China has become a theme of considerable interest, even from a general, international perspective. Taiwan’s literature has received relatively broad dissemination in the PRC via reprints, although specialists even in such well-known research institutions as Beijing’s Academy of Social Sciences obviously still lack the material basis and adequate library resources for comprehensive research, at least for the time being. The reactions to this literature by the general reading public and the response of influential PRC writers to available literary texts from Taiwan, however, remain comparatively unknown. Recent essays on Taiwan literature since 1986 written by the popular writer Zhang Xinxin and published in various places thus seem to me to be quite a remarkable exploratory step in a new direction. In this essay, although I will deal with the broad issue of reception both in the PRC and on Taiwan, the emphasis will be on Taiwan’s shifting situation concerning a possible reception of PRC literature, using materials and impressions from my visits to the PRC and Taiwan in 1985 and 1986. The postscript covers developments up to the end of 1988.