Taiwanese Writer Bo Yang

One Chinese writer who had the greatest influence on me as a 17-year old was Bo Yang (柏扬). I remember reading his book "The Ugly Chinese" (丑陋的中国人) during a Chinese class. When caught, the teacher did not reprimand me. Instead she just sighed, probably inwardly happy that at least I was reading a Chinese book.

Bo Yang's real name is Kuo Yi-tung (or Guo Yidong, 郭衣洞), which is really strange, as "Yi" in this case means "clothes" and "dong" "holes."

In his book "Taiwan A Political History", Denny Roy mentioned that Bo Yang was arrested in March 1968 over a newspaper cartoon of Chiang Kai-shek. He was then tried before a military court and accused of being a Communist agent.

"The evidence for this charge was that Kuo's girlfriend had attempted to learn from a military officer how many bicycles were in his regiment, and that Kuo had advised one of his friends to remain in mainland China after it fell to the Communists rather than flee to Taiwan," Roy wrote.

He was later sentenced to an 18-year sentence, of which he served nine years before being released.

As a teen, Bo Yang's books and experiences fascinated me. But even though I sympathized with his plight, I've begun to, over the years, assess him in a more critical light, and have come to the conclusion that he was just being unconstructively critical of everything Chinese. But at least he has to be credited for waking me to the many negative aspects of Chinese culture, thinking, and mentality.