History Through the Lens of Fiction

Sidney Teng

With just a handful of clues to go on, Teng was able to reconstruct scenes from Ukyo Oo’s life. Pictured is the Great Guandi Temple, located in the Tainan neighborhood where Oo grew up.

Holds a PhD in Taiwanese literature from National Cheng Kung University. She has received a grant from the National Culture and Arts Foundation ROC, a Ministry of Education Creative Literature and Arts Award, and Kaohsiung’s Takao Fengyi Literature Award. Her The Dawn Light won the Hsing Yun Award for Global Chinese Literature.

Pictured is the Shrine to the God of Matchmaking located in the Tainan neighborhood where Oo grew up.

Bringing Ukyo Oo back to life

Sidney Teng, author of The Dawn Light, tells us of her encounter with Ukyo Oo (1906-1938), the first Taiwanese natural historian during Japanese rule. (The spelling “Ukyo Oo” reflects the Japanese pronunciation of his name. In Chinese, it is Wang Yuqing in Mandarin or Ong U-khing in Taiwanese.) Says Teng: “I dis­covered Oo’s archive while gather­ing information for my doctoral dissertation.” Looking at a bat specimen Oo had prepared, Teng noticed he had labeled it in three ways: with its scientific name in Latin, plus its common names in Romanized Taiwanese and in Esperanto. “As well as meeting the standards of academic research, Oo recorded the names in Taiwanese and Esperanto so they could be under­stood by locals and be accessible to Esperanto speakers worldwide.” This gesture piqued Teng’s curiosity.

Ukyo Oo’s name is little known in Taiwan. He was raised in poverty, but through self-education he was able to sit the certification exam for secondary-school teachers held by ­Japan’s Ministry of Education and won qualification to teach two subjects, natural history and health education.

The annals of natural history record Hemiphaedusa ooi as a species of land snail endemic to Taiwan, and it was named after Oo, who discovered it while collecting specimens.

The writings and collections through which Oo presented himself to the world deepened Teng’s impressions of him, but his untimely death was saddening. “Maybe I can use a novel to bring Ukyo Oo back to life again,” she wondered.

Amidst her thesis research, Sidney Teng came across Ukyo Oo, who died prematurely. But she has used her novel to bring him back to life.

Reconstructing time and space

On the day of our interview, Teng invites Lin Jiann Nong, a Tainan-based veteran guide, to take us on a tour of the key sites mentioned in the novel, such as Tainan Normal School (now National University of Tainan), Grand Guandi Temple, Anping ­Canal, and the former site of the Tainan Shinto Shrine (now Tainan Art Museum Building 2). Tainan Normal School was where Oo rose from janitor to the position of assistant in the school’s natural history research office, and where he met Dr. Moichiro Maki (1886-1959), who was to have a lifelong influence on him.

We also take a stroll along Anping Canal. In the summer of 1937, from time to time the surface of the waterway flickered with a strange light, sowing alarm among city residents. Although seriously ill at the time, Oo went to the canal, took samples and discovered that this was Noctiluca scintillans—a lumin­ous variety of sea plankton popularly known as “sea sparkle”—in action. He penned an article that employed scientific evid­ence to dispel the public’s doubts, and that monograph in turn inspired the title for Teng’s novel.

“The ambience in historical fiction is founded upon accurate data from the era in which the story is set,” explains Teng. “The depth of immersion into the time period and the descriptive geo­graphy of the novel work in tandem to create a sense of space that renders the characters more three-dimensional.”

To reconstruct scenes from Oo’s life and detail the romance ­between him and his Japanese wife, Masao Saeki, which broke through ethnic barriers, Teng cleverly exploited undocumented gaps in his life history. “Ukyo Oo was raised on Tainan’s Shennong Street, a small street in front of Guandi Temple. So in the book I mention the temple’s Yuelao Shrine—dedicated to the God of Match­making—and have Oo gift Saeki a hand-mounted butterfly to reveal his feelings for her.”

Oo featured Fort Provintia—a 17th-century Dutch colonial outpost in Oo’s hometown of Tainan—when designing the logo for La Verda Insulo, a magazine published in Esperanto.

Japanese-Taiwanese cooperation

Oo’s inspiration for natural history came when he met Dr. Moichiro Maki, who recog­nized his ambition and work ethic. Maki let Oo assist in preparing specimens, and encouraged him to take the teaching certification exam. Under Maki’s guidance, Oo plunged into the world of natural history.

Early 20th-century Taiwan was a new world for Japan­ese scholars making their first foray into the tropics. Full of ambition, they explored the island thanks to Taiwanese who helped them conduct their research, as did Tadao Kano with his indigen­ous guide Totai Buten, and Moichiro Maki with Ukyo Oo.

Chen Fang-ming, chair professor at National Chengchi University, believes that the strategy applied in writing The Dawn Light is quite distinct from its predecessors, in that “between the Japanese and the Taiwanese there seem to be no adversarial stances, just one of working partners.”

Asked about the relationship between colonizer and colonized during Japanese rule, Teng smiles. “I believe there were people who were willing to seek something of greater value, such as academic achievements or the realization of their dreams, and were capable of working together across ethnic lines.”

During her visits to Tainan sites frequented by Ukyo Oo, novelist Sidney Teng shared Oo’s story with local students she happened to meet there.

Kan Yao-ming

minBunun is a Bunun word meaning “to accumulate experience,” or “a life-changing transformation.” (courtesy of Aquarius Publishing)

A Hakka from Shitan Township in Miaoli County, from an early age he was immersed in the folklore and rural legends of this Hakka region, which nurtured the magical realism of his future works. He has won several awards including the Unitas Fiction Award, the Book Prize of the Taipei International Book Exhibition, and the Wu Zhuo-liu Literature Prize. Representative works include the novels Mystery Train, Killing Ghosts and The Pangcah Girl, and several have been published in Japanese.

Trailblazer: Kan Yao-ming is a recognized pioneer among Taiwan’s new generation of nativist authors. He derives inspiration from rural legends and draws sustenance from the land, which endows his writing with joyous surprises.

Origins of inspiration

Kan Yao-ming, regarded as a pioneer of “neo-nativist” fiction, is renowned for his writing in the magical realism genre. In 2021 he released minBunun, a novel he had been conceptual­izing for more than a decade. Kan still remembers the trip he took in 2004 from Xiang­yang on the Southern Cross-Island Highway up to Jia­ming Lake at more than 3000 meters above sea level. There he learned of the tragic “Sancha Mountain Incident”—a deadly plane crash that also proved fatal for the rescue team—which inspired his novel.

In September 1945, a bomber carrying newly liberated American prisoners of war disintegrated in midair in a typhoon and crashed into the Mt. Sancha area of the Central Mountain Range. The Japanese army organized search and rescue teams comprising nearly 100 Japanese, Han Chinese and Aborigines to ascend the mountain and locate survivors, but the weather changed drastically and all crew members and passengers, numbering 25, as well as 26 team members, met their deaths.

“Taiwan’s worst-ever mountaineering accident was the ‘Yelüning Incident,’ which occurred in 1913 in the Mt. Hehuan area during a surveying expedition. The second largest was the ‘Sancha Mountain Incident,’ but its background was a rescue operation,” says Kan. “During World War II, Taiwan was bombed by Allied forces, and by September 1945 the Japanese in Taiwan had surrendered. But the island was still under temporary Japanese control. In such an atmo­sphere, organizing a team to rescue enemy soldiers reveals the subtleties of human nature.”

Kan Yao-ming (left), novelist Zhu Hezhi (right), and Bunun guide Salizan Takisvilainan visited the site of the Mt. Sancha plane crash to examine the wreckage of the B24 bomber and deduce flight conditions just before impact. (courtesy of Salizan Takisvilainan)

Filling in the gaps in history

As you open the novel, you might expect a description of the fateful events in the mountains. But the narrative commences with Halmut, the protagonist, returning to his Bunun tribal village bearing ill tidings.

After the death of Halmut’s twin brother due to ­illness in their youth, a fellow Bunun named Hainunan has taken the place of his sibling in Halmut’s heart. The pair have grown up playing together, pursuing their shared dream of a career in baseball. Unfortunately, Hainunan is killed during an American air raid.

When Halmut returns to his village to report the death, he learns that an American bomber has gone down in the mountains. He joins the rescue mission. But when they encounter an American survivor, should he save him or not? The author uses the text to shine a light on the struggle and transformation that take place in Halmut’s heart.

Kan chose to approach the book from the Bunun point of view, “because the Aborigines are the soul of the land, and if we view history and the land through the prism of this soul, we can forge a closer bond.” The book deftly taps into Bunun culture, in which dreams are believed to presage the future and lives are filled with myths and ­legends. The descriptions of mountains, animals and plants are riveting; it is as if trees can march into people’s homes and stand before the hearth. The Bunun call Jia­ming Lake cidanuman mas buan—“mirror of the moon”—and Kan’s words too are inspired by legends of the countryside and sustenance drawn from the land, making for a read that is full of joyous surprises.

In order to reconstruct the historical scene, Kan went to the crash site and photographed the wreckage to identify what remained of the aircraft. He wanted to clarify in his mind what had happened in the last seconds of flight. “The plane broke up in midair before it crashed. They weren’t flying at a high altitude, plus the crew had parachutes, so there was a possibility of survivors.” After this close examination, the plot constructed itself step by step in the author’s mind, and he included the detail of a sole survivor as an ordeal for Halmut to overcome and “become a genuine human being.”

courtesy of Salizan Takisvilainan

minBunun: Finding oneself

The novel’s title, minBunun, signifies “to become a Bunun” in the Bunun language.

The Sancha Mountain Incident serves as a backdrop. “But this novel explores the changes human beings ­undergo in the chinks that occur in the larger trajectory of history. It’s like observing how plants burrow out from roadside crevices—I want to know how they survive the challenges of an environment that lacks water or soil,” says Kan.

In another allegory in the novel, Kan showcases a Formosan clouded leopard, a wild creature that is nearly extinct in Taiwan. The leopard is chained, and only by sacri­ficing one of its front legs is it able return to the wild.

Says Kan: “Like my novel’s protagonist, as we mature we may really have to do like the leopard, and sacrifice a part of ourselves in order to go on living with fortitude.”          

courtesy of Salizan Takisvilainan

A species of land snail endemic to Taiwan, Hemiphaedusa ooi, was named after Oo, its discoverer. (courtesy of Taiwan e-Learning and Digital Archives Program, Academia Sinica Center for Digital Cultures. Copyright holder: Taiwan Malacofauna Database, Biodiversity Research Center, Academia Sinica)

This former fish market, located next to Tainan’s Anping Canal, is a white European-style building erected in 1936 that has witnessed nearly 100 years of the canal’s history. Now preserved, it has become a part of Tainan’s historical narrative.

After The Dawn Light was published, more clues emerged about Ukyo Oo, including his grave in Tainan’s Nanshan Cemetery, which was discovered by a group of local historians. (courtesy of Lin Jiann Nong)

In 1937, Oo visited Tainan’s Anping Canal to take samples of an organism that glimmered oddly at night on the water’s surface, and discovered that it was a bioluminescent plankton known as sea sparkle. He wrote an article that used scientific evidence to dispel public concerns about the phenomenon, and his monograph inspired the title for Sidney Teng’s novel.