Literature in Post-1949 Taiwan, 1950 to 1980s

Taiwan’s post-1949 era began when China’s Nationalist government, led by Chiang Kai-shek, retreated from the mainland to settle on the offshore island province of Taiwan after losing the civil war to the Communists. ¹ The forty-year period under the rule of two presidents from the Chiang family (Chiang Kai-shek and his son Chiang Ching-kuo) was characterized by remarkable continuity and homogeneity socially, politically, and culturally. Drastic structural changes, however, have been occurring at all levels of society since the mid-1980s, as a direct consequence of the lifting of martial law, the recognition of an opposition party, the removal of the ban on founding newspapers, and the resumption of communication with mainland China at the civilian level. New intellectual and artistic currents have emerged, many with the explicit or implicit motive of reexamining existing orders. Nonetheless, it is undeniable that literary accomplishments of writers from the earlier post-1949 decades laid solid groundwork for Taiwan’s vital and pluralistic cultural developments in the 1990s.