Yang Shouyu

Yang Shouyu

Yang Shouyu, formerly known as Yang Songmao, has a pseudonym of Shouyu, villager, Yang, Xiang, y and master of jingxiangxuan. Born on March 9, 1905 in Changhua City, he died on April 8, 1959.

Character experience

Yang Shouyu was born in a scholarly family. His father was a scholar of the Qing Dynasty, so he was influenced by his family education and under the guidance of the famous teacher Guo Keming. Therefore, although he only had a "elementary school" diploma, he had a deep foundation in Sinology. Therefore, during the development of new literature in Taiwan, he was able to not only write in vernacular, but also chant poems. After graduating from the first public school of Changhua in 1920, he taught Chinese in a calligraphy school. Because of his love of chanting, he once joined the "yingshe" and "Changhua new drama club" of the old poetry club of Changhua. He, Lai He and Chen Xugu are all friends of the "Qingshe" of the old poetry club of Changhua. As Lai He and Yang Shouyu are close friends of his hometown, when he was in the art column of Taiwan Xinmin daily, he was busy with medical work and was unable to do anything about it. Fortunately, Yang Shouyu helped to revise and finalize the manuscript. During this period, Yang Shouyu also published many short stories and dozens of new poems, becoming one of the most prolific writers in Chinese writing since the "cradle" and "maturity" of Taiwan's new literature. In the 1930s, he joined the "Taiwan literature and Art Alliance" and served as a writer of "Taiwan culture". At that time, Yang Shouyu opened a class to teach Chinese regardless of the Japanese's prohibition, and was driven by the Japanese. After his recovery, he was certified as a middle school teacher and worked as a Chinese teacher in Changhua industrial vocational school.

Influence of works

Looking at Yang Shouyu's works, we can find that because he was deeply influenced by Lai He, the father of Taiwan's new literature, his works have many similarities with Lai He in terms of material selection and theme presentation, such as resistance to Japanese colonial policy and description of the life of the peasant class. However, many theorists point out that Yang Shouyu's thinking is much wider than Laihe's. The theme of his writing focuses on the interests collusion between the landlord class and the Japanese colonists during the period of Japanese occupation, and the miserable situation of exploitation and oppression of the peasant class, thus reflecting on a social structural problem. Huang Wuzhong analyzes the characteristics of Yang Shouyu's novels and thinks that his description of the living conditions of the underground class can be divided into three categories: (1) the separation between the landlord and the tenant; (2) the misery of the unemployed; (3) the poverty of the small people. In addition to this aspect, Shi Shuyu pointed out in his article "reading Yang Shouyu's novels in the outpost": providing intellectuals with left leaning phenomenon and humanitarian care is an indispensable role in Yang Shouyu's novels. On the whole, Yang Shouyu's rich works not only enriched the enlightenment stage of Taiwan's new literature period, but also provided us with a great space for thinking because of his profound discussion of class issues.

Chinese PinYin : Yang Shou Yu