ABSTRACT
Influenced by Kafka and Faulkner, Qideng Sheng was considered a modernist in his early short stories, the best-known of which is "Wo ai hei yanzhu" (I love Black Eyes, 1967). Later, his writing was classed with the xiangtu group, and, like many of those writers, Qideng Sheng left the capital in 1970 to work exclusively among Taiwanese-speaking compatriots, as a teacher in his hometown. He has written much about the rapidly changing life in the cities of the island. In his peculiar way, Qideng Sheng has thus documented the tragedy of modern man and the absurdity of existence in a Chinese and Taiwanese context.
