Writer Back Home at Last

Bo Yang， a Taiwan writer who passed away on April 29， 2008， was finally buried in a cemetery in Zhengzhou， the capital of his home province Henan in central China. At the burial ceremony on September 12， 2010， his wife Zhang Xianghua displayed a brief note he had written in 2007. The note reads: “How good to be back home in the mainland!”

Born in Huixian County， Henan Province in 1920， the famous writer was named Guo Yidong by birth. His father was a county magistrate and his birth mother died early. And his stepmother treated the son badly. The boy lived with relatives and was by no means a good student in his school years. In retrospect years later， the preeminent man of letters said， “My knowledge of history， literature， poetry and human rights came from studies on my own. I am a sponge that keeps absorbing everything. I did not have a teacher that gave me a systematic education.”

He went to Taiwan in 1949. It was there that he began to write stories all signed with his real name. His most popular name Bo Yang came from a village of aboriginals in Taiwan when he and his colleagues at Salvation Corps visited during their trip to see a highway. The village was called Ancient Cypress and Poplar. The story writer loved the name so much that he adopted the Cypress and Poplar as his penname， thus Bo Yang in Chinese.

Bo Yang had two marriages in the mainland before he came to Taiwan. Each wife gave birth to a daughter. His third marriage took place in Taiwan and gave him two sons. He met a college girl named Ni Minghua during one of the events hosted by his work unit. They fell in love. He got divorced and got married with the college girl. In order to make a good living， he quit the Salvation Corps and began to write essays for newspapers as a freelance writer. He was happy these years. This marriage gave him a daughter and he gradually established himself as a good essayist who criticized seamy side of the society.

Bo Yang did not know he was to know what politics meant the hard way. In order to earn some more money， he was translating “Popeye” for a newspaper. In one episode， the father and the son were in a small island and tried to run for the presidency. One word in a speech bubble in this episode was “Fellows”. The inspired translator used the well known greeting used by Chiang Kai-shek. That caused him trouble. On March 7， 1968 he was found guilty of “attacking state leadership” and thrown into jail. Before the verdict， the translator thought it was a misunderstanding and some political zealot might have overreacted. He never thought he would have been found guilty by speech. Altogether he spent nine years and twenty-six days behind bars.

In retrospect， Bo Yang said he drew a line with the KMT the day he was in jail and despaired. The life in jail tipped him to strong criticism of the reality. It was in jail that he had acquired a deeper understanding of politics and human nature. And it was in jail that he became a historian. The jail library happened to have “A General History for the Wise Ruler”， a 294-volume 1，363-year chronicle put together in 1084 by Sima Guang (1019-1089). The jailed scholar studied the chronicle thoroughly. It was during his jail time that he penned three books on history. “A Historical Outline for Chinese” was one of the three books. It was once considered one of the ten books that changed Taiwan.

In 1975 when Chiang Kai-shek passed away， the government in Taiwan granted amnesty in imitation of the ancient emperors and Bo Yang’s sentence was reduced to eight years. He was scheduled to be released in 1976， but he was forced to stay on the Green Island away from Taiwan.

After his release， Bo Yang became a high-profile political speaker. His writings touched upon a wide range of sensitive topics such as democracy， freedom and the relations across the straits. He observed， “I had had no intention for politics. My ambition was to be a man of letters. Jailed for political reasons， I came into contact with politics. That is why I answer honestly when I am asked questions about politics.”

In the second year after he was set free， Bo Yang married Zhang Xianghua. The three books he wrote in jail were published. And he made his fame by publishing two other books: “Bo Yang’s Edition of A Comprehensive History for the Wise Ruler” and “The Ugly Chinese”.

“The Ugly Chinese” caused a commotion. The criticism blasts the ugliness in the Chinese temperament and character shaped and poisoned by the dyeing jar over the past thousands of years. His relentless comments caused repercussions in Chinese communities across the world. However， critics point out that the author does not pinpoint the taproots of the faulty structure of the Chinese culture and that it is hard to tell whether the phenomena he criticizes in the book are singular to the Chinese only. Bo Yang explained， “My book was meant to make a loud wakeup call. Though mine was not a book of cure-all therapies， I wanted to help redemption.”

Nostalgia

In November 2007， Zhou Bingbing， an independent producer at Huayi Brothers， a giant in China’s film industry， visited Bo Yang in Taiwan and found the 87-year-old missed his home province Henan Province very much. Bo Yang was in very poor health. The meeting was interrupted now and then when the old slipped into sleep. Zhou had just bought the film rights of a story by Bo Yang. Bo Yang explained that it was a real thing he had heard from a college classmate years before. The story looks deep into human nature， love and ethics. That evening， Bo Yang asked a lot of questions about the mainland. Zhou Bingbing said he would invite Bo Yang to visit China when his health improved. Happy about the prospect， Bo Yang jotted down “How good to be back home in the mainland!”

It was not the first time that the respected writer had expressed his wish to go back home in the mainland. In a 2005 interview with CCTV presenter Bai Yansong， Bo Yang expressed his desire to see the peaceful reunification of the motherland. “This is not about going home with honors. This is about going home in peace. We will feel contented if we can go home and take a look around.”

Bo Yang had a legendary life in which he spent ten years writing stories， ten years writing essays， ten years for sitting behind bars and ten years writing about history. Today， there are controversies about the writer， but there is no denying the important role he played in the history of Chinese culture.

He passed away at the age of 88 on April 29， 2008. The legendary writer failed to come back home alive. But two years later he finally came home in Henan.□